Leave the Pieces
by hollycomb
Summary: Stan and Kyle have no memories of South Park or the first ten years of their lives. When they meet as adults they form an instant connection, but will it be enough to make up for lost time and repair the warped town that forgot them? Stan/Kyle
1. Chapter 1

Stan is in the middle of his lunch break when he gets called back to duty, which isn't supposed to happen, but they're understaffed and apparently there's an emergency. He scarfs the rest of his ham and cheese and brings his Coke back to the front desk, where Carol is waiting for him with a humorless stare.

"What's the emergency?" Stan asks. They're not exactly in the fucking ER here, just an internist's office outside of Akron, but Carol considers difficult customers an apocalyptic event, and she claims they respond better to Stan because he's a man. It's true that half the new patients assume he's a doctor upon meeting him. Stan likes to think that it's because he obviously knows what he's doing.

"There's a really bitchy gay guy out there," Carol says. Stan raises his eyebrows.

"Really? You couldn't handle that yourself?"

"He took one look at me and demanded to speak to the doctor about scheduling. Can you imagine Dr. Harper fielding scheduling requests? Fucking hilarious!"

Stan puts his Coke down and peeks through the sliding window that looks out into the waiting room. There's a lanky guy pacing around, his arms crossed over his chest.

"What does he want to be treated for?" Stan asks. He's trying to figure out why Carol assumes this guy is gay. His pants are a little tight, and his sweater is a shade of powder blue that Stan would never wear, but there's got to be more to it than that.

"He doesn't want to be treated," Carol says. "He's in a tizzy over his boyfriend. That sickly little thing sitting by the door."

Stan cranes his neck and only gets a quick look at the guy by the door before the taller one sees him looking and rushes over to the window. He scowls at Stan and knocks on the glass.

"Hello?" he says. "Excuse me? Are you the doctor? I need to speak to the doctor immediately."

"He's all yours," Carol says sweetly, ducking out of the room. Stan would throw something at her if he wasn't being watched by a patient. He turns back to the man and tries to smile as he slides the glass window open.

"Are you the doctor?" the man asks again, shouting. Other patients in the waiting room are staring. Stan picks up a pen and clicks the button on the back violently, thinking about the beer he'll have after his shift.

"I'm not the doctor," Stan says. "I'm the guy in charge of scheduling." Actually, all the nurses work on Dr. Harper's schedule, but maybe this will placate the guy. He takes a deep breath and stands up a little taller.

"Good," he says. "My boyfriend needs to be seen right now."

"Okay. Is there some reason you came here instead of an emergency room?"

The guy scoffs. His glasses are obnoxiously self-aware, and his breath smells like feta cheese. Stan tries to get a better look at the boyfriend, who is still slumped in a chair near the door, but with this other guy crowding the window he can only see the boyfriend's shoes. Ratty hipster sneakers.

"Right, the emergency room," the guy says. "So we could be ignored and he could pick up some other nasty disease in the meantime? No, this place was recommended to us for his particular condition, and I'm sorry, but we don't have time to wait for an appointment. We're going to Hawaii in three days."

"Wow," Stan says, deadpan. "That is an emergency."

If the guy could breathe fire Stan would be roasting alive. Stan knows he needs to be nicer to difficult patients. He was warned about that recently. He clicks the pen again and forces a smile.

"No, I understand," he says. "The doctor's at lunch, but I'll see what I can do. What seems to be the trouble with your friend?"

"Boyfriend," the guy says. He sets his mouth in an ugly line and gives Stan a once-over. "We were told that this was a gay friendly office."

"It is," Stan says, though Carol is a bigot and Dr. Harper thinks all gay guys love Lady Gaga. "Can I talk to your boyfriend, maybe?"

"He's barely conscious," the guy says.

"That sounds like an emergency room level situation, sir." Stan cranes his neck again, trying to get a look at this barely conscious condition. He can see the boyfriend's hipster heel bouncing nervously.

"Not literally," the guy at the window says. "But he's quite out of it, feverish, and the main problem is that he's having trouble breathing. It's a chronic condition, probably to do with his agoraphobia."

"Agoraphobia." Stan has never had an agoraphobic patient before. He's kind of excited, suddenly. "I see. Have you taken his temperature recently?"

"Yes. It was 100.5 this morning."

"That's actually not very high."

"Excuse me? Don't you want to know a little more about the situation before you make that call? Kyle is diabetic, and he has asthma, a severe grass allergy – shouldn't you be writing this stuff down?"

"Here," Stan says. "Let me get you the forms. Does Kyle have insurance?"

"Yes, of course! Well, I mean, he's still on his parents' plan. Do you have a pen?"

Stan gives him all of the paperwork, learns that his name is Spencer, and takes another look at Spencer's boyfriend Kyle once the window is clear of Spencer's bony frame. Kyle does seem fairly comatose, staring into space. He's got his arms wrapped around himself, his knees pressed together, the toes of his hipster sneakers pointed inward. He barely registers it when Spencer sits down beside him, just smoothes down his matted red hair and glances over at the admittance forms without interest. When Kyle looks up at the window, Stan knocks over his Coke. Cursing, he cleans it up with some napkins leftover from Carol's lunch. Gay guys make him nervous. He's got nothing against them, he just feels vaguely accused when they're around, like they'll be able to tell that he sometimes jerks off to their porn and still considers himself straight. Mostly straight.

Dr. Harper returns from lunch and starts shuffling around in the nurse's area. He's only five years older than Stan and a total Melvin, but he's pretty nice and Stan is lucky to have a job. His nursing school wasn't exactly one of the top programs in the country.

"Hey, can I shove a difficult patient in your face real quick?" Stan asks, because Dr. Harper responds well when Stan treats him like they're buddies. He laughs, sorting through the mail.

"How difficult?" he asks.

"Uh, actually, it's more like his boyfriend that's difficult."

"_His_ boyfriend? Uh-oh. Was there a grave injury at a Lady Gaga concert?"

"Ha." Actually, Dr. Harper is mostly a huge asshole. "No, it's like, a fever. Sort of. I don't know, if you want me to check him out and try to get him to schedule something with you later, I could do that."

"Yeah, could you?" Dr. Harper rubs his the back of his neck, wincing. "I had barbecue for lunch and my stomach is killing me."

He disappears, presumably to spend some time stinking up the men's room. Stan turns back to the waiting room window and jumps when he sees Spencer standing there, staring in at him. Spencer presses Kyle's chart to the glass.

"Finished," he says.

Stan collects the chart and shuts the window again, promising to get Kyle into an examining room in less than twenty minutes. He's usually good about not letting patients push him around, but he's curious about this situation for some reason. A severe grass allergy? Who announces that to a front desk nurse? A mother, maybe, not a boyfriend.

"Holy shit," he mutters as he looks over Kyle's chart. Under 'medications' there are six major drugs listed, and there's an arrow indicating that the sheet should be flipped over for the rest of the list. Some of the drug combinations are pretty risky, to the extent that Stan is surprised Kyle is fessing up to taking all of them at once. Under the 'Anything else we should know?' field there's a star and the words "ask me." Stan wonders if this notation refers to the agoraphobia, but Kyle – or Spencer? – has already listed that under Psychological Conditions (misc.). It's the kind of chart that usually makes Stan want to bang his head on his desk, but he leaps out of his chair as soon as he finishes reading it. Someone needs to save this poor son of a bitch from himself before he ends up in a coma, his liver choked with designer drugs.

"Kyle Cartwright?" Stan says, poking his head out from the back door and peering into the waiting room. Kyle gets up, the sleeves of his baggy sweater sliding down over his hands. Stan meets his eyes, which are a kind of watery green, like kelp in motion. When Spencer tries to follow Kyle into the back, Stan holds out his hand.

"Patients only," he says.

"Excuse me?" Spencer all but wheels backward with indignation. Stan gives Kyle enough room to slip in behind him, then blocks Spencer's path again.

"Anyone over eighteen comes back alone," Stan says. "Sorry."

"But he's hardly cognizant!"

"It's okay, Spence," Kyle says. He sniffles like a kid who's putting on a show for his parents, wanting them to know how brave he's being. "I'm alright."

"See, he says he's alright," Stan says, starting to close the door. "Bye now."

"Wait! Excuse me! Hang on!"

Stan lets the door close on Spencer and turns to Kyle. He stares back at Stan impassively, waiting to be told what to do. He's skinny – underweight! – and his skin is pallid. He only has a few freckles, just under his eyes, barely visible. A couple of hours in the sun and they'd be darker. Probably.

"Uh," Kyle says. "Are we going to a room?"

"Oh – yeah." Stan fumbles the clipboard, barely recovering it before it can clatter to the floor. "Um, here, come over here, I'll weigh you, and take some blood."

Kyle follows him to the pre-exam area with listless obedience, and toes off his sneakers before stepping on the scale. Stan feels anxious as he pushes the weights around, the way he gets when his patient is an adolescent girl who's obviously self-conscious. He always knocks off five pounds, sometimes ten, and feels guilty, because he's supposed to want to be accurate.

"One hundred and forty-three," Stan says. "That's pretty low for your height. With clothes on."

"Want me to do it naked?" Kyle asks. Stan sputters, somewhere between a laugh and choking on soup. Kyle stares at him, blinks, then smiles. Stan can smell his shampoo. It smells expensive. There's something else that hovers around him, too – old books? Used tissues?

"Well," Stan says. "Now for your blood. But – wait. You had something on your chart, something you wanted me to ask you about."

Kyle frowns. "Oh, that. Yeah, I'll tell you after we're in the exam room, if that's okay. It's nothing that means taking my blood is gonna kill me."

"How about a urine sample?" Stan smiles queasily.

"Nah," Kyle says. "I'm not really in the mood for urine today."

Stan takes Kyle's blood, trying to ignore the thing that happens to him when he touches Kyle's skin. He can't remember ever noticing the tiny hairs on the back of someone's hand before, but maybe it's just because these are a very faint red, strawberry blond. He can't remember ever actively applying the word _strawberry_ to anyone's features, especially not a patient's.

"Hold this under your tongue," Stan says, offering Kyle the thermometer. Kyle doesn't take it from him, just opens his mouth and lets him stick it in. A boner introduces itself to Stan's scrubs like a cartoon rake handle that has popped up to snap him in the face. He clears his throat and busies himself with the blood pressure cuff. Kyle's thermometer beeps, and Stan hides his erection under his lab coat before turning to remove it.

"Ninety-nine point nine," Stan says.

"Is that lucky or something?" Kyle says.

"Yeah, jackpot." Stan says. "Or, wait, that's seven-seven-seven. Which would make you clinically dead. Here, let me get your blood pressure." Normally, he lets the patients push up their own sleeves, but today that doesn't seem to be an option. Normally, his dick is not hard from touching a patient. Normally, pre-come doesn't pool into the y-front of his boxer shorts as he gently rolls up a patient's sleeve, exposing more strawberry blond arm hair. The veins on the underside of Kyle's wrist are visible through his pale skin, and he seems to be offering them like naked trust when he puts his arm out for the cuff. Stan makes a very serious face while he takes Kyle's blood pressure, as if the fate of the world is hanging in the balance. He can feel Kyle smiling at him the way a feverish person does, with dopey acceptance. Though, technically, Kyle isn't feverish.

"Sorry my boyfriend was a dick," Kyle says. "He just really cares about me."

"Oh, that's okay. I've seen bigger dicks. I mean! Encountered bigger dicks. I mean -"

Kyle laughs, and Stan's boner throbs, because Kyle is smiling at him, the blood pressure cuff deflating around his arm.

"Um, 120 over 80," Stan says. "Perfect."

"Really?" Kyle frowns, seems disappointed.

"Perfect is good," Stan says, idiotically, and Kyle grins.

They go to exam room five, because it's the best exam room, with the picture of a beach and palm trees. Stan isn't a fan of the other framed pictures in the office, mostly prints of stale old paintings. He's seen the ocean only once, when he drove down to Galveston after graduating from nursing school. That first night, drunk as shit and alone on the beach, the ocean made him cry. He's going to live there one day, even if he has to work for a plastic surgeon whose patients give him nightmares.

"So, okay," Stan says once the door is closed. "You're here because of shortness of breath?"

"Yeah," Kyle says. "It might just have been a panic attack, though. I have those a lot."

"Do you know what set this one off?"

"I woke up from a bad dream and Spencer was making tea."

"The tea, uh, contributed to your panic?"

"The kettle was screaming."

"Ah. Well, if you're sensitive to that, he shouldn't use a tea kettle."

"You should tell him that," Kyle says, and he grins like he's imagining how well that would go. Stan frowns.

"If he cares about you, like you said –"

"Oh, he felt bad about it and everything. My friend gave me the name of this doctor – Dr. Harper? – and Spence has been trying to get me to see him. My friend said Dr. Harper specializes in cases like mine."

"Cases like yours?"

"Debilitating anxiety in amnesiacs."

"What now?" Stan looks up from the chart. Kyle is sitting on the exam table, swinging his legs a little bit. He doesn't seem anxious at all, but he is on quite a lot of drugs. "Did you say –"

"That's the condition that I put 'ask me' about," Kyle says, gesturing to the chart. "It's kind of hard to explain in a little white box on a medical form. I don't remember anything from before I was ten years old."

Stan actually starts to write before he hears that. He drops his pen, and stares at Kyle as he lets it clatter to the floor.

"Excuse me?" he says.

"They think – my therapists, and my adoptive parents, who are therapists, too, actually – um, they think I must have suffered some trauma that I can't remember. I was found in a Tesco parking lot outside of London when I was ten years old, and all I knew was that my name was Kyle. I had an American accent, but nobody from America ever claimed me. My adoptive parents worked at the group home where they took me after they found me –"

"Stop talking," Stan says, sharply. Kyle startles, his eyes widening.

"Sorry?"

"What the fuck is this?" Stan backs away from him, his stomach churning. "Some kind of fucking joke? Did Carol tell you to do this? How did she even know –"

"Who's Carol?" Kyle asks. He's swiftly broken-looking, clutching at his elbows. "Look, if you're one of those people who doesn't believe amnesia is a real medical condition – I don't know, my friend told me this place was –"

"I'm pretty sure I believe it's real," Stan says, trying to keep from shouting. "And I'm pretty sure you know that, since someone obviously sent you here to fuck with me."

"What?" Kyle looks clueless. Stan is shaking, still backing away. He jumps when his back hits the door.

"You're lying, right?" Stan says. "Please, dude, whoever you are, don't fuck with me about this, please –"

"What are you talking about?" Kyle asks. His eyes are growing wet, his hands clawed around the edge of the examining table, the sanitary paper crinkling. "I'm not lying. This is true, I swear. It was in the news and everything."

"In the news?" Stan isn't sure that his own story was. He was found hiding under an elementary school playground's slide in rural New Mexico. He doesn't really remember that, just remembers waking up in a sterile bed in the orphanage where he spent the next eight years of his life, with no memory of the first ten. Except his first name: Stan. For years it seemed like he got nothing but questions he couldn't answer, just that one, the first one they asked when they pulled him out from under that slide.

"Please," Kyle says. His breathing is labored, the sanitary paper on the table tearing as his fingers close more tightly around it. "I get really – it's really hard for me when people don't believe me –"

Stan is so rattled that it takes him almost half a minute to realize that Kyle is having a panic attack, the color draining from his face as he starts to wheeze, clutching at his throat. Stan forces his own panic away and hurries forward to put his hands on Kyle's trembling shoulders. Stan's hands are shaking, too.

"Kyle," he says, keeping his voice as steady as possible. "You're having a panic attack. Can you hear me?"

"I can't – breathe," Kyle says. It sounds a little put on, but he's obviously distressed.

"Do you need oxygen?" Stan asks. His boner is long gone, but Kyle's smallish shoulders feel good under his hands, and touching Kyle has calmed his own panic somewhat. "Kyle, look at me." He takes Kyle's chin in his hand, gently, and tips his face up. Tears slide down Kyle cheeks, but he meets Stan's gaze easily and seems fully cognizant.

"S-some of my doctors thought I made it up," Kyle says. He takes a deep breath and lets it out. Stan rubs Kyle's arms like he's trying to warm him. It seems to help, though the tears are still coming.

"Some of mine thought that, too," Stan says. Kyle sniffles, and lets Stan clear some of the tears from his cheeks with his thumbs. Unprofessional, maybe, but Kyle's face is so wet.

"What?" Kyle says.

"I'm sorry I reacted like that. It's just – I've never met another amnesiac. And I lost the same years, the first ten." He stares at Kyle, holding his gaze, letting that sink in. "How old are you?" he asks, trying to remember Kyle's chart.

"Twenty-five," Kyle says.

"Fuck."

"That's bad?"

"No, it's just – insane. I'm twenty-six. We're almost the same age. Where did you say they found you?"

"Outside a Tesco, ah – a supermarket, just about fifty miles south of London."

"That's pretty far from New Mexico."

"New Mexico?"

"Where they found me," Stan says. He shakes his head. Kyle stares at him, his lips parted.

"Wait," Kyle says. "Are you fucking with me?"

"I swear to God, no," Stan says. "And where the hell did you hear that Dr. Harper specializes in amnesiacs? He specializes in ear infections."

"One of my friends from back home told me," Kyle says. "He lives in London, he said this clinic was world famous. Me and Spencer came from Chicago just for this. My panic attacks have been terrible, and Spence is afraid they'll spoil our vacation."

"Jesus," Stan says. "Who's your friend who recommended us? He must have heard that there was an amnesiac with a similar history working here and gotten confused. Or something."

"His name is Christophe, he's French," Kyle says. "My dad's patient. He has a lot of problems, too – Christophe, not my dad, although, well - okay. This is crazy. They found you in New Mexico and you only knew your first name?"

"Yeah, when I was ten. Um, I need to sit down." Stan pulls a chair toward the examining table and falls into it heavily, his legs feeling rubbery. Kyle reaches over to touch the top of his head, and he smiles shyly when Stan looks up at him.

"I've only met two other people who claimed to be amnesiacs," Kyle says. "My parents thought they were both faking, which made me really mad, but I kind of did, too. It's weird, I don't even know you, but I don't think you're making it up."

"I'm not," Stan says. "I'd never joke about this. It's a nightmare."

"Yeah," Kyle says. Stan wants to pull him down off the table and hold him in his lap, wants to talk to him for three days straight, wants to know everything about him.

"Damn," Stan says. He scrubs his hands over his face. "I think I need to leave work early. I think I need a fucking beer. Or ten. Do you want to come have a drink?"

"I'm not supposed to have alcohol," Kyle says. "But. Yes."

"What hotel are you guys staying at?"

"We didn't get a hotel. We were just going to drive back to Chicago after my appointment. That's why Spence was in such a hurry to get me seen. It was a long drive. We're both really tired."

"But – you can't just leave!" Stan says. Kyle grins. "I mean – because – we should talk. Compare notes. Don't you think?"

"Yeah," Kyle says. "Christophe must have heard your story and figured you could help me with my own shit. He really made it sound like you were a doctor, though."

"A lot of people think I'm a doctor," Stan says, proudly. Kyle's smile widens.

"Why'd you decide to be a nurse?" he asks.

"Uh, I couldn't really afford eight years of school. Being a penniless orphan and all. Plus, I'm not that great at math."

Kyle frowns. "No one ever adopted you?"

"Nope. Something about 'pre-adolescent boy who claims not to remember anything about the first ten years of his life' put people off, I guess."

"Not my parents," Kyle says. "They were all excited about, you know." He pulls a ratty tissue from his pocket and unfurls it. "Studying me, like. Up close."

"They're both therapists?"

"Yeah. Dad specializes in childhood trauma, and my mom's written like ten books on memory disorders. One of them is just called _Kyle_."

"Damn. It's about you?"

Kyle grins at the stupid question. "Yeah. Don't read it, though! I mean, I hate it when people do. Spencer did."

"Did you ask him not to?" Stan knows Carol is probably starting to get antsy, wondering what's taking so long in Exam Room 5, but she can go fuck herself. Kyle shrugs.

"Yeah, I pretty much begged him not to read it. But he said he wouldn't be able to understand me if he didn't. I was like, hello, you ass, I'm trying to tell you, you'll never understand me if you _do_."

Kyle seems to hear himself suddenly, and he turns bright red. Stan's dick reawakens.

"I've got it!" he says, jumping out of his chair.

"You have?" Kyle sits up straighter, looks excited.

"You and Spencer can stay at my place. I have a pull out couch."

"Oh, I don't know," Kyle says, mumbling. He looks down at his tissue, which is coming apart, leaving tissue dandruff on his jeans. "I have a lot of allergies."

"My place is super clean," Stan says, though it isn't. He could make it clean, maybe. "Look, I really think you and me need to talk, and not just for a few hours. We need to talk for, like. Days."

Now it's his turn to get red-faced. Kyle smiles. He takes a deep breath and lets it out.

"I agree," he says. "It would be scientifically irresponsible if we didn't, um. Explore this."

"Yeah." Just the word 'explore' makes Stan's cock twitch. "But, um. I don't think Spencer should be there, actually. He's kind of. Loud. And he might derail the conversation."

"He is big on doing that," Kyle says, nodding to himself.

"So what if you stay with me and he gets a hotel?" Stan says, pushing the words out fast, aware that he's being ridiculous. Kyle's eyes widen, but he doesn't seem horrified by the suggestion. He wets his lips.

"I don't know," he says. "Spencer wouldn't like it."

"Oh, fuck him. I mean -" Stan cringes and Kyle frowns.

"He takes really good care of me," Kyle says. "I know he can be a little pushy, but -"

"You shouldn't be on Ambien and Lucidrine at the same time," Stan blurts. "You could develop serious heart problems. Whoever's taking care of you needs to be more careful about your drug combinations. Also, your liver. Is it okay?" Stan feels panicked, wants to hide Kyle in his lab coat and rush him out of here. He's sweating, stupidly aroused, still having a hard time believing that he's met another amnesiac, though in hindsight he feels like he knew what Kyle was as soon as he saw him.

"My mom prescribed those," Kyle says. He sighs. "My dad says my suspicions that she wants to kill me are just paranoid fantasies. A complication of the severe anxiety."

"Well." Stan isn't sure what to say. He wants to touch Kyle again, and shoves his hands into the pockets of his lab coat to keep from doing it. "I'm sure she doesn't want to try to kill you. I mean, it's rare that people on both drugs develop those problems, but it's possible –"

"So what sort of mental disorders do you have?" Kyle asks. "Anxiety? Chronic night terrors? Difficulty breathing when people doubt the things you tell them?"

"I haven't been diagnosed with anything," Stan says, feeling almost guilty about this. "I, um. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes. So, there's that." He's not sure how to explain the rest, that he wakes up and starts sobbing because he feels like he was on the verge of remembering something, someone, everything, and lost it. Kyle sighs.

"Lucky," he says. "If that's all."

"Yeah." There's more, but Stan has never tried to put it into words. When he was a kid, he thought the point of seeing therapists was to pass a kind of test: act as normal as possible, and maybe someone will adopt you. He knows he turned out weird, despite his best efforts. He's never dated anyone, doesn't have any real friends, likes working with medical equipment because it's sterile, and became a nurse because it's a way to be close to other people without any real intimacy. He's still a virgin at twenty-six, and he watches gay porn because he has too much respect for women to stomach the other stuff. Or something.

"You know," Kyle says. "I would really like a beer. Or ten. I haven't been drunk in years."

"Maybe if we got drunk together it would trigger some memories."

"No." Kyle pinches his eyes shut and shakes his head violently. "No, no. I don't want to remember any of it, ever."

"Seriously? I guess that makes sense. You ended up with a pretty good life. I mean, you got adopted, you have French friends who care about your mental health. And that boyfriend."

"Spencer."

"Right, him. I never really, um. I guess I'm still hanging on to this childhood fantasy that I have some amazing family that I can't remember, and a bunch of awesome friends, and they've all been looking for me this whole time, and, uh. Yeah."

Kyle slides off of the examining table, and Stan is afraid he's going to walk out, back into the arms of that pastel-sweatered scarecrow. He comes to Stan, fidgets awkwardly for a moment, then hugs him like he's trying to learn how to do it, patting Stan's back very softly.

"You're so calm when you talk about it," Kyle says. "It's like you're the opposite of me. I'm surrounded by all these people who _care_, yeah, but, well. You saw my chart. I'm kind of a fucking disaster."

"Oh, shit, please come stay at my apartment," Stan says, starting to lose his composure. He hugs Kyle until he squeaks, his hipster sneakers lifting off the floor. "I know you don't know me, but -"

"I feel like I do," Kyle says. He pulls back to search Stan's eyes, studying his face. "And that scares the shit out of me, to be honest."

"There's no way we knew each other before," Stan says, laughing nervously. "It's just a crazy coincidence. And it's not even that – your friend found the one other person alive who can't remember the first ten years of his life, and sent you to meet him." Stan is still holding Kyle; he's so fragile, shaking like a leaf, but warm, too. He doesn't seem to want to let go of Stan, either, his hands sliding up to rest on Stan's shoulders.

"It's just symptom recognition," Kyle says, nodding to himself. "That's why it feels like I know you."

"Even though we don't have any of the same symptoms."

"Except for the whole not remembering the first ten years of our lives thing."

"Oh, yeah. That."

They make plans to meet at a local bar near Stan's apartment in an hour, after Kyle has explained the situation to Spencer as delicately as possible. Stan is brain dead throughout the rest of his shift, tripping over himself and thinking about the way Kyle's eyes got greener when trust started flooding into them. On the way to the bar, he rolls up the windows of his shitty car, plugs in his mp3 player and blasts the song that's been his favorite since childhood, singing along at the top of his lungs.

"Tomorrow, tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow! You're always a day away!"

This dumb ass song makes his eyes water every time he hears it, but he'll never not love it, and for the first time in his life the hope that he borrows from the lyrics feels real.


	2. Chapter 2

Kyle has never been good at convincing people that he knows what's best for himself. His inability to do so has kind of been the theme of his life. The part that he can remember, anyway.

"Explain this to me one more time," Spencer says. He's livid, humiliated, and pretending to be objective. Kyle is good practice for him on this front; Spencer is two years away from becoming a licensed psychotherapist. At Cambridge, he was Kyle's mother's favorite student. He probably would have stayed abroad and continued his graduate studies with her if she hadn't sent him back to America to check up on her prodigal son.

"The nurse," Spencer says slowly. "That guy with the cud-chewing look in his eyes who answers phones for a doctor who specializes in ear infections. He has your condition. Your exact same condition."

He's not really phrasing it as a question, probably because he thinks he already knows the answer. He doesn't believe that there was another boy found alone and without ten years' worth of memories, claiming to know only his first name. Kyle can hardly believe it himself, but when Stan was in that room with him, telling his story, Kyle knew it was true. He's still shaking, feels like he just drank enough espresso to fill a fish tank.

"Yes," Kyle says, slowly, mimicking Spencer. "I must have gotten confused when Christophe was telling me why we should come here. It's not the doctor who can help me, it's the nurse."

"The nurse," Spencer says, as if Kyle said _the_ _crackhead shouting on the corner_. "And how is this nurse going to help you, exactly? Even if we accept that he's missing the same number of years, so what? You've already had time to compare notes, I take it. You were back there for an hour. So? What did that accomplish, exactly?"

"I'm not alone!" Kyle says, nearly shouting. A few people in the bar look in their direction. Spencer scoffed at the place when they walked in, and scoffed again when the most exotic beer on the menu was Sierra Nevada. He opted for a gin and tonic. Kyle is drinking cranberry juice, wanting whiskey.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Spencer says. "As your boyfriend, it's just not really news to me that you're not alone. But good on you for recognizing that after one conversation with some hick who claims to have amnesia."

"Don't you think I can recognize when someone is telling the truth about this?" Kyle asks. His eyes are watering, his throat tightening. Spencer knows better than to doubt him, knows what happens, though Kyle can't really blame him for being incredulous.

"Fine," Spencer says. "Okay, I can accept that you believe him. I'll even accept that he's telling the truth, if that will make you happy. But this, this – _scheme_ involving going over to his apartment while I tottle off to get a hotel room? No, Kyle. I forbid it."

"You're not my legal guardian. I don't need your permission."

"We'll see." Spencer digs out his cell phone.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing, Kyle? You're not acting like yourself. You're an agoraphobic and you don't trust strangers. This is an episode. I'm calling your mother."

"Don't – you can't!" Icy dread cracks Kyle's bones into pieces at the thought of his mother reaching down like the _deus ex machina_ that she is and putting a stop to all of this. His hands are sweating, his airway narrowing. He wills himself not to faint as his vision starts to tunnel. If he does, he'll wake up strapped to a bed, Spencer and his mother muttering about his latest episode.

"Miranda?" Spencer says, standing from the table, the phone pressed to his ear. "It's Spence. Oh, not very well, I'm afraid. Kyle is presenting with delusions that have me very worried."

A dull ringing begins in Kyle's ears, and the ice spreads through his veins, freezing him in place. He wants to get up, to slap the phone from Spencer's hand, to scream that he's not a child and not delusional, never has been. He can't move, can't make his voice work.

"I've never seen anything like it," Spencer says. "Not in Kyle, anyway. I suspect it's some sort of passive aggressive attack on me. He's upset with me because I haven't been very supportive of this whole Hawaii venture. I'm only thinking of him – you know how he gets on planes, and around the ocean, and in crowded airports."

The trip to Hawaii was Kyle's idea. He bought the tickets to prove something to all of them, that he can do normal things, enjoy the kind of vacation that a normal person would fantasize about. It's true that he's terrified of going, but he thought he was doing a pretty good job of hiding that.

"Yes – oh, I know," Spencer says, chuckling into the phone. "Believe me, I would be consulting the book on an hourly basis if Kyle would allow me to keep a copy in the apartment. But you know how he gets. No, this is the complete opposite of last summer, actually, some kind of attempt at a diagnosis refutation. He wants to spend the night with a stranger. He thinks he's found a kindred spirit."

Kyle can hear his mother's angry laughter. The cold spreads all the way to his fingertips, and he feels like he's slipped into his worst reoccurring nightmare, the one where he's sinking into a frozen lake, looking up at the shrinking hole in the ice as it closes over him.

A bell rings, and Kyle hears it from beneath the ice. He can't move his head, but his eyes are still under his control. He looks at the door, and exhales nosily when he sees Stan coming into the bar, looking for him. He's still wearing his scrubs, but he's got a bulky jacket buttoned over them in place of the lab coat. He grins and waves when he sees Kyle. His cheeks are pink from the cold.

"Oh, God, here we go," Spencer says when he sees Stan coming toward them. "Hang on, Mir, I'm going to step outside. We're in mixed company, suddenly." He gives Stan a faux friendly nod as he slips past him, toward the door. Stan watches him go, then turns to Kyle.

"Where's he going?" Stan asks.

"Um, nowhere." Kyle flexes his fingers on the table, leaving his hands in place so that Stan won't see the puddles of sweat that have gathered under his palms. "Just outside."

"Are you okay?" Stan turns a chair around and straddles it, folding his arms over the back. "You look kind of clammy." He starts to reach for Kyle, then touches his own hair instead, dragging his fingers through it. Kyle has always admired guys with dark, straight hair. He used to think he envied it, but now he just wants to bury his face in it.

"I'm okay," Kyle says, with some effort. Stan scoots closer and looks at the window.

"Who's he talking to?" he asks. They can see Spencer pacing around out on the sidewalk, his shoulders raised against the cold as he laughs into the phone.

"My mother," Kyle says. "They're having a consultation."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. About me."

Stan rolls his eyes. He motions the bartender over and orders a Coors Light. He doesn't ask Kyle what he wants, just points to him and raises his eyebrows. Kyle grins.

"Same thing for me," he says.

"Is it okay for you to drink?" Stan asks when the bartender is gone. "You didn't take the Ambien last night, did you?"

"No," Kyle says, lying. He wants to drink cheap beer with Stan until the sun goes down. He wants to lick Stan's cheeks, wants to taste that shade of pink on his skin. It's strange. Physical attraction is usually a pretty remote concept for him; he doesn't often want to lick people.

"I take it he's not crazy about our idea," Stan says, gesturing to Spencer. The beers arrive, and Kyle gulps from his.

"He's just worried about me," Kyle says. "It's understandable, I think."

"Sure," Stan says. He looks like he wants to fight Spencer, and Kyle would sort of love to see that, which is cruel. Spencer would be destroyed, and Stan would be sued for assault.

"He's not talking me out of it, though," Kyle says. "And neither is my mother." This seemed like an impossible concept just five minutes ago, but now Stan is here, and Kyle feels like a different person around him. Kyle's mother would say this is a very bad sign: _reckless, uncharacteristic behavior is never progress, Kyle, even if he does make the ice in your frozen lake melt_. That's what his mother has called it since before she was his mother, when Kyle was just one of her patients at the institution. _Your frozen lake_, or _Kyle's frozen lake_, if she's discussing him with others. When Kyle was young, he suggested to her that maybe his forgotten trauma was something as simple as almost drowning in an actual frozen lake. His mother told him that it was probably not physical trauma that caused his condition, at least not anything as simple as a near-death experience.

"Did you have any evidence of physical abuse when they found you?" Kyle asks when half his beer is gone. He feels drunk already, and knows that's a terribly personal question, one he should have saved for the privacy Stan's apartment, but he feels like he needs to know everything right away. Stan doesn't seem offended, just shakes his head.

"None," he says. "Not even malnutrition or anything."

"Me either," Kyle says, because he can see Stan wanting to ask, afraid to make him talk about it. "My mother's theory is that it was years of systematic emotional abuse, culminating in abandonment."

"Fuck," Stan says. He puts his hand over Kyle's on the table, then seems to want to apologize for it, his mouth dropping open. Kyle smiles at him so he'll know it's okay. He usually hates being touched, but this is different.

"Yeah. God bless amnesia, if that's the case. Like I said, I never want to remember."

"I know what you mean, sort of," Stan says. "My doctors always said I was protecting myself by being unable to remember, that if I had to live with what happened I might break down completely."

"Uh-huh," Kyle says. He drinks again, his heart pumping hard. He doesn't want to think about that; breaking down completely is his biggest fear, and he knows it would happen if some rogue memory crept past his defenses. "So why'd you become a nurse?" he asks, ready to change the subject.

"I liked them a lot when I was a kid," Stan says. "The nurses who took care of me after I got found on that playground. The doctors were sort of – assholes, usually. No offense."

"None taken." Kyle grins. "Most of my nurses were usually assholes. I mean, they weren't like you."

"They didn't invite you to stay at their apartment after ten minutes of conversation?"

"Nope. The bitches didn't even ask me out for beers."

They smile at each other, and it's sort of amazing how thrilling it is, just grinning at Stan like an idiot. Kyle plays with the condensation on the side of his glass, rubbing his fingertips through it. His other hand is still pressed under Stan's on the table.

"Well, this is cozy," Spencer says, reappearing so suddenly that they both jump. Kyle pulls his hand away from Stan's, into his lap.

"What did mother say?" he asks, bitterly. He's asked Spencer not to do this to him, and Spencer claims he does it out of concern for Kyle's well-being. That might be so, but he also has a hard-on for Kyle's mother's approval.

"She says you probably need to go home," Spencer says. "Not to Chicago, to London." He drops back into his seat and takes a drink from his melted gin and tonic, eying Stan warily.

"I'm not going back to London," Kyle says. He left home when he was eighteen and hasn't been back since. Not voluntarily, anyway. When he flunked out of college for failing to show up to any of his classes for a month, he had a breakdown and was whisked home, back into the care of his parents. When it happened again a few years later, at a different American university, there was a similar homecoming. He associates the UK with illness, disorientation, and heavy medication.

"I know it sounds crazy," Stan says. "But I really think we should spend some time together, me and Kyle. There's so much we could learn from each other."

"I disagree," Spencer says. "You've both lost memories, but that doesn't mean your mental states are at all compatible – Kyle, what are you drinking?"

"Coors Light," Kyle says. He throws the rest of it back. Spencer snarls at him.

"If you're going to ignore your dietary restrictions, you could at least drink _good_ beer."

"Coors Light is good," Stan says, giving Spencer a wounded look. Kyle wants to sit in Stan's lap. He waves the bartender over and orders another beer for both of them.

"My treat," Kyle says.

"If you say so," Stan says. He looks at Spencer. "Listen, dude," he says.

"Don't call me dude," Spencer says.

"Okay – _sir_. Listen. I think you're being a little stubborn. You seriously can't see why we'd feel a connection to each other, me and Kyle? Two people who both don't remember the first ten years of their lives? You can't imagine how we might get something out of spending some time together?"

"I think Kyle would get more out of group therapy with others who have severe anxiety disorders," Spencer says. "Unless of course you have one?" He smirks doubtfully, as if Stan is far too simple for anything so exciting.

"I don't have a disorder," Stan says. "But I – it's not like I'm totally cool with what happened to me. Look, whatever – why am I asking you?" He turns to Kyle. "You still want to do this, right? Come back to my place?"

"Yes," Kyle says. He pictures his mother as a furious but tiny figure in the far distance, stomping her feet and squeaking out tiny protests, incapable of any real influence. "Definitely, I do."

"This is approaching a committable situation," Spencer says. His hands are in fists on the table. "You're a danger to yourself, Kyle. You don't know this man."

"I'll call you if he tries to murder me," Kyle says.

"Now you're suicidal! Is that what you're telling me? I should be dialing 911?"

Kyle rolls his eyes and reaches for his beer when it arrives, thanking the bartender. Normally these threats would be paralyzing, and he would cry and beg Spencer not to have him locked up, but now they just seem futile, the usual bullshit designed to scare him into admitting that everyone else knows what's best for him.

"Good luck convincing the police that he's a danger to himself," Stan says. "I don't think it would take them long to figure out you're just a jealous boyfriend."

"Jealous! What! Of you? Ha!"

Spencer is worked up, and Kyle is enjoying it. He's never given much thought to whether or not he loves Spencer, since he spent most of his teenage years listening to therapists tell him that he probably won't ever experience romantic love the way a mentally stable person does. When Spencer showed up in America and introduced himself as Kyle's mother's student, Kyle was glad just to have someone who he didn't have to explain himself to, someone who validated his panic with scientific acceptance.

"Here's what's going to happen," Kyle says, already halfway through with his second beer and feeling empowered. "Spence, you're going to check in to the Holiday Inn across the street. I'm going to go back to Stan's apartment and talk to him for awhile. Maybe all night."

"Are you going to let him fuck you, too?" Spencer says, hissing this like a threat. "Is that in your wonderful plan? Is that why he's assuming I should be jealous?"

"Dude, no," Stan says, but the pink on his cheeks is red now.

"I asked you not to call me dude!"

"Spence, hey." Kyle reaches over and takes Spencer's hands in his. He might not be in love with Spencer, but he could be, someday, if he ever gets well enough to understand anything resembling romantic love. Spencer is smart, and selfless; he's devoted so much energy to Kyle in the past year.

"I promise, this isn't about passive aggressive defiance, or sex, or self-destruction," Kyle says, still holding Spencer's hands. "I just feel, well. I feel this is significant, and obviously Christophe thought it would be a good idea." This will work better if Kyle tries to sell it as someone else's plan. "He's been my friend since I was a kid, and he knows everything about me. He wouldn't have sent us here if he thought it might hurt me."

"How did Chris even find out about this guy?" Spencer asks. He gives Stan a suspicious appraisal. Stan is gulping his beer, and Kyle is distracted for a moment, watching Stan's throat bob.

"Um, I don't know," Kyle says. "I tried to call him when we left the clinic, but he didn't answer. Maybe you could call him? That might be good. And let me know what he says." Kyle stands. Stan does, too, hurriedly.

"I promise I won't hurt him," Stan says to Spencer. He looks very serious, moving closer to Kyle as he says so. Spencer covers his eyes with his hand.

"This is a nightmare," he says.

"Spencer, look at me," Kyle says. Spencer spreads his fingers and peeks at Kyle from between them. "You know me, you know what I'm like when I'm being self-destructive, or delusional, or whatever you and mom call it. I feel _good_ right now. I feel calm. And we're in a strange town, a new place, surrounded by all this shit that I usually don't handle very well. Don't you think there's a reason for that?"

"Coors Light?" Spencer says. Stan laughs.

"Ready to go?" he asks, touching Kyle's elbow. Kyle looks at him and smiles, nods. Stan's eyes are dark blue like the surface of a lake in the summertime, no ice in sight.

"Please don't do this," Spencer says. His voice is small, and Kyle knows he's not just jealous. He's worried, and Kyle would be, too, if he wasn't also elated, excited, ready to be alone with Stan.

"I'll be fine," Kyle says. He leans down to hug Spencer. "Here, take my credit card. Pay for these drinks, have a few more. Try to relax."

"You're telling _me_ to relax?" Spencer says. He blinks rapidly, as if he's trying to clear his eyes of this bizarro world vision. "That's rich."

"I'll call you if I need anything," Kyle says. He pats Spencer's shoulder. It's the first time in his life that he's been on the other end of a condescending shoulder pat.

"Don't forget your jacket," Stan says, taking it from the back of Kyle's chair. Stan holds it out for him, and Spencer glowers at them as Kyle slips his arms into it.

"This is beginning to feel like a practical joke," Spencer says.

"Welcome to my life," Kyle says.

"Seriously," says Stan.

Stan's car is old and small, the backseat littered with empty water bottles, fast food napkins shoved into the cup holders. It smells good, though, like chewing gum and pine needles. When Stan starts the car some show tune starts blaring, and he turns it off quickly.

"Sorry," he says.

"It's okay," Kyle says. "What was that?"

"Uh, nothing. You hungry? I could make you some spaghetti when we get to my place."

"That sounds awesome." Kyle can't stop smiling, running his hands along his seat belt and staring out the windows of the car as darkness falls over the suburbs, streetlights coming on. He feels like a kid who's just woken up in some adult's exhilarating life.

Stan's apartment building is like his car, dated and in need of some upkeep. The chill in the air has increased now that the sun is completely gone, and when Kyle follows Stan into the lobby of his building he feels like he's climbing out of the frozen lake, warmth enveloping him.

"I'm just gonna grab my mail," Stan says, heading over to a wall of mailboxes near the main staircase. He takes out his keys and opens a box marked 'S. EMERSON.'

"Emerson?" Kyle says, grinning. "For the writer?"

"Uh, no. The playground where they found me was at an elementary school, Emerson Elementary. So they named me after that."

"It's so weird that we both remembered our first names," Kyle says. "Do you know how rare that is?"

"Yeah." Stan takes the mail from his box and looks at Kyle sheepishly. "That was part of why they didn't believe me. 'Cause how could I be sure that was my name if I wasn't sure about anything else?But I was sure. I know that's what I was called – before."

"I was the same way," Kyle says, not ready to think about how alarming this is. "Anything good?" he asks, nodding down to the letters in Stan's hand.

"Oh – just bills." Stan laughs. He seems suddenly self-conscious. "I don't really – I mean. Nobody sends me cards or anything."

"What date did you pick for your birthday?" Kyle asks.

"The date they found me," Stan says, glumly. "October first."

"I picked Christmas," Kyle says, shaking his head. "Not my smartest move. It just seemed like the best day of the year, you know?"

"Yeah," Stan says. He laughs uncertainly and heads for the stairs. Following him, Kyle feels guilty for saying that. Without a family, Stan's Christmases probably weren't very merry.

"Are you in touch with any of the kids you grew up with?" Kyle asks as they walk up to the second floor. "From the – home?"

"Nope," Stan says. "They all thought I was weird."

"Really? You seem so, like. The kind of guy people would, um. I don't know, you're pretty magnetic."

"Maybe only to you," Stan says. He turns to grin at Kyle from over his shoulder. It hits Kyle low in the stomach and spreads down toward his thighs. Everything about Stan makes him think of the traditional trappings of comfort, the kinds of things that never worked on him as well as being doped into indifference: blankets, chicken soup, hugs. Kyle has never walked up to someone he doesn't know and put his arms around them the way he did with Stan in the examining room. He didn't even know himself in that moment, only knew that he wanted to make Stan feel better. The way Stan grabbed him and squeezed him is the kind of thing that would normally make Kyle squirm away in terror, but he loved it, and wanted Stan to do it again, harder.

"So, this is my place," Stan says, turning on the lights. "It's not that impressive, I know. And I might have exaggerated a little when I said it was super clean."

"I like it," Kyle says, beaming. It's a real American bachelor pad, with a cheap sofa and sports magazines on the secondhand coffee table, an over-sized TV mounted on the wall and a tiny kitchen, a weightlifting bench in the place where a dining room table should go.

"Let me get your coat," Stan says, helping Kyle out of it. He places it on a rack near the door, and Kyle might be imagining things, high on his sudden independence, but he's moved by the way Stan handles his coat, carefully smoothing the sleeves down after he's hung it up. "You want another beer?" Stan asks. "All I've got is Coors Light, but –"

"I love Coors Light," Kyle says. "Spencer's the beer snob, not me." They usually have wine, if Kyle is actually allowed to drink, which is rare. Stan goes to the fridge and returns with a beer, popping the can open before handing it to Kyle.

"I'm gonna change out of my scrubs," he says. "Make yourself at home, okay?"

"Okay." Kyle is smiling nonstop, and he would be embarrassed, but Stan is, too. Stan's grin is less manic than Kyle's, more vaguely fond, like he's enjoying Kyle's contentment more than his own. Kyle laughs at himself under his breath when Stan disappears into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. He's starting to get drunk, finding sentimental value in everything. Alcohol doesn't usually have this effect on him; in high school it made him gloomy and prone to sobbing. Maybe Coors Light is the miracle drug he's been searching for all his life. He gulps from the can as he wanders around Stan's small apartment, investigating. There's a rumpled blue sweater on the sofa, and Kyle sits down beside it, rubbing his fingers over it. It's soft, some kind of cotton blend, and just the idea that Stan wore this, took it off and left it here is charming. Kyle sets his Coors Light on the coffee table, checks to see that the door to Stan's bedroom is shut, and picks up the sweater. He holds it against his face and breathes in deeply. It smells so good that he's immediately dizzy, like he's inhaled a powerful chemical. The sweater is full of perfectly average smells: deodorant, laundromat soap, a hint of stale sweat, but the fact that this particular combination of scents belongs to Stan makes Kyle want to pull the sweater over his head and wear it for days. He knows he needs to calm down or risk having an actual episode. His heart is beating too fast, and his hands are shaking as he sets the sweater back in place, trying to re-rumple it correctly.

When Stan emerges he's wearing jeans and a gray shirt with long sleeves. The fact that his socks are white with red heels shouldn't make Kyle want to weep happily, but it does. He writes it off as drunkenness and follows Stan into the kitchen, where he gets a beer for himself.

"Okay," Stan says. He takes a long drink and sets the beer on the counter, claps his hands together. "Spaghetti."

"Yes," Kyle says. "Can I help? I know a good recipe for marinara sauce."

"I don't have tomatoes or anything," Stan says. "Just this." He roots through a cluttered pantry cabinet and pulls out an unopened jar of Paul Newman sauce, the kind of thing that would make Spencer groan in disgust. He's the one who taught Kyle the good marinara recipe.

"That's cool," Kyle says. "As long as it doesn't have mushrooms. I'm allergic."

"Let's see," Stan says. Kyle moves close to him and they read the ingredients together. Kyle will have to refuse if Stan offers him another beer; he's already fuzzy enough to seriously consider nuzzling at Stan's cheek. Stan smells incredible now, like soap and shampoo and something that might be cheap cologne, and he's still warm from the shower. Kyle can feel it radiating from beneath Stan's clothes, and he wants to be closer to it, to wrap that heat around him like a blanket.

They determine that the sauce has no mushrooms, and Stan heats it up in a beat-up little saucepan while Kyle stirs the boiling spaghetti noodles. He finishes his beer, and forgets to refuse when Stan offers him another.

"Spencer's probably on the phone with my mother again," Kyle says. "They'll probably rack up a thousand dollars of long distance charges tonight, trying to decide what to do with me."

"It's crazy," Stan says. "You're an adult, you can make your own decisions. Does he always treat you like this?"

"He's not that bad. He's just upset that I'm not getting any better. We've been together for a year, and I he really thought he could fix me."

"That's kind of, um," Stan says, muttering. "Condescending?"

"No, that's something people who love – uh, people in my life just have to accept. I'm not going to get fixed. I'll always be like this."

"You seem fine to me," Stan says. Kyle frowns.

"Well, you haven't seen me at my worst. This is unusual. Me acting normal."

"I don't think it's that normal to ditch your boyfriend for a stranger," Stan says. "But I don't think it's bad," he says, quickly, looking up from the saucepan. "Obviously."

"Whatever," Kyle says, not wanting to talk about himself. He came here to interview Stan. "Have you got a girlfriend, or? Anything?" He's ninety-nine percent sure that Stan is straight. He doesn't even own a dish towel.

"No," Stan says. "No girlfriend."

"What's the longest relationship you've been in?" Kyle asks. The year with Spencer is his; before Spencer, Kyle went through stretches of celibacy that were interrupted by self-destructive binges when he would let anyone in the vicinity use him as a come bucket. The only reason he didn't end up with a thousand disgusting diseases is his tendency to hang around cautious academics who will put him over the side of of a bed and fuck him while he's stoned, but always with a condom.

"Uh, you know," Stan says, mumbling. He's stirring the pasta sauce, avoiding Kyle's gaze. "I haven't had any very long relationships. I'm not really ready for that."

Kyle drinks from his Coors Light and turns to have another look at Stan's apartment. No pictures on the walls, no framed photographs on the side table by the sofa. Even his kitchen sink looks lonely: there's one white plate sitting in it, beside an empty glass that looks like it had once contained milk. Kyle thinks of Stan eating breakfast over the kitchen counter, drinking his milk, and touches the small of Stan's back. Stan looks up at him, his lips parted, eyes soft. Kyle takes his hand away.

"Sorry," Kyle says. "Just – I know what you mean about not being ready. I did all the sex stuff when I was pretty young, just to defy my parents, and it all felt really mechanical. Even now, it's hard for me. Real intimacy."

"Me too," Stan says. He seems dazed for a moment, and he flushes deeply, bright red. "Um, I think the pasta's done. Here, I'll get the strainer."

Since there's no table, they have dinner on the sofa, their plates resting on the cushions. They're turned toward each other, not talking much as they shovel forkfuls of pasta into their mouths. Kyle has never had canned sauce before. It's nothing compared to Spencer's marinara, but it's surprisingly decent.

"I didn't realize how hungry I was," Stan says, his mouth full.

"Me either," Kyle says.

"So, um." Stan wipes his mouth with a paper napkin. "You haven't said much about your dad."

"Yeah." Kyle groans. "I love him. He's great. But he's also kind of, I don't know. He lets my mom push him around. I tried to talk them into letting me go off my meds when I was getting ready to leave for college, and I could tell he wanted to try it, but she just browbeat him with all these drug facts. She was right, though. I stopped taking them after I left home, and I was a fucking train wreck. I was afraid to leave my dorm room. Even going across the hall to use the bathroom made me hyperventilate."

"Damn," Stan says. "How did you go to class?"

"I didn't. I flunked out. It was a good school, too, my dad had pulled strings to get me in. They were really disappointed in me. I had to come home, and I was in the hospital for awhile."

"The hospital?" Stan looks heartbroken, and Kyle forces a laugh, wants to recapture the bubbly feeling he had when he first arrived here.

"Psychiatric hospital," he says. "Did they ever make you spend time in one?"

"Not exactly," Stan says. "I was at the same group home pretty much since they found me, after they figured out that I didn't have any physical injuries. Doctors tried to figure out if I was lying, then they tried to get me to remember stuff. Nothing worked."

"Did they put you on medication?"

"No. I always tried to have a good attitude, you know? To be as normal as possible? I thought –" He laughs and touches the back of his neck, staring down at his empty plate. "I thought if I was a good enough patient, normal enough, someone would adopt me."

"Turns out being a total head case was the better approach," Kyle says, stupidly. He feels bad for the joke, though Stan is still smiling. Kyle reaches over to touch Stan's knee, and he swallows down a happy whimper when Stan puts his hand over his.

"I can't really complain," Stan says. "The people at the home were good to me. The other kids kind of ostracized me, but they didn't pick on me too much. I think they were afraid I had some kind of disease they might catch, that they'd forget everything, too."

Kyle turns his hand over, his palm facing upward, and Stan slides his fingers between Kyle's. He grips Kyle's hand cautiously at first, then squeezes their palms together. Stan looks up at him shyly, saying nothing. His thumb moves on Kyle's hand, and Kyle shivers.

"Could I sleep on your couch tonight?" Kyle asks. His voice is soft; he doesn't want to startle Stan into letting go of his hand. "I can't deal with Spencer's hysteria right now."

"Of course," Stan says. He grins. "I mean, yeah. I want you to stay."

"Thanks," Kyle says. "But, can I ask – why?"

"Because I feel like I know you, too," Stan says, rushing the words out. He squeezes Kyle's hand again. "Don't be freaked out by that, okay?"

"I'm not freaked out," Kyle says. "I was scared, earlier, but. I think the beer helped."

Stan laughs. For a moment Kyle actually thinks Stan will lean forward and kiss him, but he doesn't. There's something so innocent about his interest in Kyle, and it's probably not sexual. Kyle should be relieved about this, not disappointed.

They wash the dishes together. Kyle cleans the milk glass out with care, dries it and returns it to the cabinet. Stan's collection of dishes includes several plastic collector's cups from sporting events.

"You don't have to do my breakfast dishes, dude," Stan says, grinning.

"I don't mind. Do you call everyone that?"

"What?"

"Dude. You said it to Spencer, too."

"I actually never say it," Stan says. "Now I can't stop. Sorry, is it annoying?"

"No way, dude," Kyle says, and Stan laughs. "I like it."

They both get another beer and return to the couch. Kyle is starting to feel sleepy, yawning, but he doesn't want to stop talking. Their conversation vacillates between dreary amnesia-related anecdotes and inane chatter. Stan's favorite sports team is the Denver Broncos, though he's never been to Colorado. Kyle tells Stan about his only experiment with athleticism, when he was thirteen years old: he joined a rec basketball team and ended up breaking his wrist.

"Hence my discovery of painkillers," Kyle says. "Did I mention I'm also an addict? It was tricky, scheduling rehab in along with daily talk therapy and rigorous antidepressant medication, but my parents made it work."

"So is it okay for you to be drinking?" Stan asks.

"Yeah," Kyle says. "I actually only used the painkillers to get high once, and considering my previous relationship with pill bottles, no one should have been surprised. Rehab was a little prematurely prescribed. I've tried everything, but nothing stuck. Pot makes me paranoid, acid made me think my hands had turned into pieces of buttered toast, and ecstasy turns me into an insta-slut. Alcohol usually just makes me cranky and tired, but this shit is amazing." He clicks his Coors Light can against Stan's, and Stan laughs.

"You do look kind of tired," Stan says. "You want to borrow some stuff to sleep in?"

"Yeah," Kyle says. He flushes with pleasure at the thought of bundling up in Stan's clothes. "Thanks."

Stan gives Kyle a pair of sweatpants with a drawstring waist, and they sag on him even when he cinches the waistband as tightly as possible. The t-shirt Stan loans him is from Stan's nursing school, advertising a blood drive that took place two years ago. He gives Kyle what might be his best pair of socks, cool and silky with an argyle pattern.

"You can use my toothbrush if you want," Stan says. It's the kind of suggestion that would normally make Kyle recoil in horror, but he nods and follows Stan to the bathroom. Stan's toothpaste tastes sugary, and his bathroom is still a little humid from his earlier shower. There's a wrinkled copy of _Psychology Today_ on the back of the toilet.

"My parents hate that magazine," Kyle says, Stan's toothbrush in his mouth. Stan is leaning against the wall beside the sink, watching Kyle brush like it's the most fascinating thing he's seen in weeks. His eyes shift to the magazine, and he shrugs.

"There's a lot of crap in there," he says. "I stole it from the waiting room at work because there's an article about amnesiacs in that issue."

"Yeah? What's it say?"

"It's about wandering amnesia. When you forget your identity and leave home at the same time. It's only ever been recorded in adults."

"I've heard of it," Kyle says. He turns on the water and spits into the sink. "I doubt there's any type of amnesia I haven't heard of."

"I want to know what happened to me," Stan says. He's suddenly very serious, wrapping his arms around himself. "Even if it was terrible."

Before Kyle can stop himself, he's pulling Stan close, hugging him. Again, Stan answers Kyle's tentative embrace by crushing his arms around Kyle until he squeaks, not quite protesting.

"It's weird," Kyle says, letting Stan hold him, his hands curling around Stan's shoulders. "Ever since this morning, when you told me – I keep catching myself thinking that we were together before we lost our memories. Not literally, but just in this sort of vacuum, in this dark place. I like the idea that, um. I was scared, and you were there. That you would have held my hand."

"I would have," Stan says. His voice is choppy. Kyle hopes he won't cry. He rubs Stan's back, and Stan releases him. Stan's eyes are a little bleary, but he manages a smile. "I would have," he says again.

"Let's pretend you did," Kyle says, softly. Stan's eyes change, pupils fattening, and Kyle needs to leave this tiny bathroom before he does something stupid. He rubs his hands over his face and sighs. "I'm really tired," he says.

"Oh, um – here. I'll get you some blankets and stuff."

Kyle should call Spencer. He checks his phone and sees five missed calls from his mother. He puts the phone away and goes to the sofa, where Stan is setting up his bedding.

"You can adjust the heat if you get cold," Stan says, pointing to the wall-mounted thermostat. Kyle shakes his head.

"It's already like eighty in here," he says, smiling. "I'm good."

"I just hate being cold," Stan says. "You can turn it down, though, if you're hot."

"No, I'm the same way," Kyle says. "I have this dream – about a lake."

"A lake?"

"Never mind." He laughs it off, doesn't want to think about that. "Um, goodnight."

"Night." Stan moves toward him, then stops himself and waves, heading for the bedroom. He closes the door almost but not quite all the way, leaving it open just a crack. Kyle climbs onto the sofa, anxiety creeping in through the haze of Coors Light. It doesn't get very close; as soon as Kyle's head hits the pillow he's drifting, so tired that he can't even work up a proper list of worries like he usually does before he sleeps.

The dream about the lake curls in slowly, like ice crystals creeping across a windowpane. Kyle is walking through the woods, shivering despite his warm clothing, thick mittens and a hat with flaps that cover his ears. He comes to a lake, and the rational Kyle who has been here a billion times before screams at the Kyle in the dream, telling him not to try to walk across the ice. But the Kyle in the dream is certain that there's something he needs on the other side of the lake, someone who can help him find his way home. He tests the ice with the toe of his boot. It seems miles thick, but his breath starts coming harder as he makes his way across, slipping in places. He wants to run to the other side, because there's something over there that's going to save him, warm arms that will close around him.

The first crack makes him shout, and his voice echoes through the silent forest, snow-caked pines watching indifferently as the crack in the ice shoots out ahead of him like a lightening bolt. The sound becomes deafening as the ice beneath his feet splits apart, and for a moment he's watching this from above, wanting to help the Kyle who is about to fall into the water, but he never can.

When he falls, he's back in his body again, unaware that this is a dream. The cold closes around him like cement, paralyzing him instantly, and all he can do is look up at the hole he fell through as it freezes over again. He's afraid to look down, because he knows what's down there: deep darkness, a void that's already swallowing him, an icy, unshakable madness that he won't awake from.

He wakes up screaming, crying, wanting to shove Spencer away and throw the bottle of Ambien that he'll offer against the wall. But it's not Spencer in bed with him, and he's not in a bed at all. He's on Stan's sofa, and Stan is with him, touching his face, telling him it's okay though he looks terrified himself.

"Kyle," Stan says. "Please – you were dreaming, okay? You're safe, you're okay, it was just a dream."

Kyle throws his arms around Stan's neck, nothing tentative in his embrace now. He presses his face to Stan's shoulder and clings, sobs moving through him like tremors. Stan doesn't interview him about the dream, doesn't offer drugs, doesn't even turn on the light. He whispers _shhh_ and rubs Kyle's back, smoothes his hair.

"I'm sorry," Kyle says, unable to stop crying. "I woke you – I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Stan says. "God, don't be sorry. Just – here." He slides onto the couch and pulls Kyle into his lap, dragging the blankets up around them. Kyle feels younger than he can ever remember being. He squirms against Stan's chest and hides his face, letting Stan arrange the blankets across his back, over his shoulders.

"Sorry," Kyle whispers again, because his wet face is pressed to Stan's neck now. He sniffles, trying to forget the dream and refusing to acknowledge how crazy this is, taking comfort in the arms of a stranger.

"There's nothing to be sorry about," Stan says, whispering. He dries Kyle's cheeks with the back of one finger. Kyle cracks his eyes open and stares at the collar of Stan's t-shirt. It's a thin undershirt, white, and Kyle can feel Stan's heart pumping hard beneath it. He touches the collar, rubbing his fingers over the worn fabric. They stay like that for a long time, Stan sweeping Kyle's tears away until they stop falling. It's so quiet that Kyle can hear a clock ticking from inside Stan's bedroom.

"You don't have to hold me all night," Kyle says. His voice is scratched up, worn out.

"Yeah, I do," Stan says. Under the blankets, Stan's arm slides from Kyle's shoulders and settles around his waist. Kyle closes his eyes.

He sleeps, and dreams that he's down in the dark, far beneath the surface of the frozen lake. He doesn't wake screaming, because he's not afraid, and maybe he never will be again. Stan is with him in the dark, holding him, so warm.


	3. Chapter 3

Kenny is already thinking about his closing duties when a Hummer roars up to the garage entrance, blocking out the fading winter sunlight. He groans and slings his wipe-down rag over his shoulder, recognizing the cherry red H1 with the custom rims as Cartman's. He's relieved when he sees not Cartman but Butters in the driver's seat, and grins when Butters gives him a timid wave. Butters parks just short of the lift and clambers out, looking especially tiny in comparison to the massive vehicle. He's barely five and a half feet tall, slight and bird boned, and he looks just as ridiculous beside Cartman as he does driving his car.

"Please tell me you stole this from him and you're just here to gas up before you run for the border," Kenny says as Butters walks toward him, carefully tip-toeing over oil stains.

"Oh - Kenny, you're funny," Butters says, grinning. Kenny grunts; he was hardly joking. The fact that Butters ended up with Eric Cartman is nothing less than a travesty, and Kenny has been waiting since high school for Butters to smarten up and find someone more like himself, sweet-natured and selfless.

"I hope I'm not too late for an oil change," Butters says. He's a little breathless, and he pulls a folded up sheet of paper from the front pocket of his powder blue shirt. "I had to go all the way to Conifer for Snacky Cakes, and I wasn't sure I'd make it back in time."

"It's fine, we're open for another hour. Why'd you have to go to Conifer for Snacky Cakes?"

"Oh, well, there's a particular kind that they don't make any more, but this one gas station just outside of Conifer still stocks them, and they're Eric's favorite, and they were on the list."

Butters holds up the list for Kenny's appraisal. Kenny takes it from him and reads the items that have been checked off, frowning. Dry cleaning, gun store (3 boxes .240-g jacketed h. point), groceries (pizza, chicken & dumplings, steak (crab stuffed) mtn. dew), dispute water bill, Zebra Frosted Snacky Cakes (5 pks). Only 'oil change' and 'clean fish tank' haven't been checked off. Butters looks exhausted but cheerful, as usual. He rubs his fists together while Kenny stares at him, withholding his usual speech about how he's got to stop catering to Cartman's every whim.

"Well, I sure do appreciate you squeezing me in," Butters says. "Eric gets real cranky if his car's not running right."

"Isn't it technically your car, too?" Kenny asks. He hands Butters his list back and watches him lovingly refold it before tucking it into his pocket.

"Oh, no, Kenny. You know my car."

He does. It's a little white Accord, seven years old. Butters uses a cotton candy air freshener that stings Kenny's nostrils when he's detailing.

"Right, but aren't you guys common law married by now?" Kenny asks. He heads for the Hummer, and Butters follows. "You've been together, what? Since middle school? I'd say everything that's his is yours, too."

"Oh, I don't know about that." Butters seems unnerved by the suggestion and starts rubbing the back of his neck. "I wasn't even allowed to drive the Hummer until last year."

"I'm touched by his faith in you," Kenny says. Butters wilts, and Kenny feels bad for the joke. He reaches up and pretends he's going to ruffle Butters' hair with his grease-stained hand, and Butters leans away, laughing.

"Are you doing okay?" Butters asks, smoothing his hair down as if the mere threat of Kenny's hand in it has disordered it. Kenny shrugs and squats down to deal with the car, wrench in hand. He knows what this question really means: _Are you seeing anybody, Kenny?_ Butters is the only person who knows him well enough to understand that doing so would mean he's okay.

"Same old, same old," Kenny says as he slides beneath the car. He doesn't like to talk about this anymore, even with Butters. When Kenny was sixteen, he went through what Butters would charitably describe as a 'hard time.' He was having sex for money in Littleton, high all the time, dying every day. Butters saved him with some help from Wendy Testaburger, who arranged to have him admitted to a no-fee rehab facility. Wendy handled all the dirty details, presumably as a favor to Butters, but Butters was the one who visited Kenny while he was recovering, always with something freshly baked, and with the kind of genuine concern that even Kenny's parents couldn't mange to fake.

"You need a hand or anything?" Butters asks, squatting down beside the car.

"I got it, Butters," Kenny says. "Just keep me company, okay?"

"Okay! Hey, guess what?"

"What?"

"Eric got tickets to the Super Bowl! Can you believe it?"

"Yeah, I can believe it." Cartman is the youngest chief of police in South Park's history, has an adorable blond slave who does his bidding with a smile, and owns the house that was formerly his mother's, no mortgage to pay. He pretty much always gets what he wants, without Kyle and Stan around to temper his megalomania. Kenny lets the wrench rest on his stomach and stares up at the dark underside of Cartman's Hummer. He still manages to find a way to miss them everyday, even as the only person in town who remembers they existed. If they really did exist. His doctors in rehab told him that his childhood friends were an elaborate fantasy that he created while he was high, something that felt like a real memory when he was sober again. Kenny told them they were wrong, but there's really no way he can be sure. He knows what it's like to be forgotten, and doesn't want to let go of the idea that South Park was different when Stan and Kyle were here, even if it is more likely that he just invented the whole thing while he was stoned out of his mind.

"Whatcha doin' under there, Kenny?" Butters asks, touching Kenny's boot. "Everything okay?"

"Uh - yeah, sorry. Just had to think for a second. It's been a long day."

"Boy, has it! Your shoe's untied, mister. Want me to lace it up?"

"Yeah, Butters. Thanks."

Kenny gets back to work on the car while Butters ties up his boot, humming to himself. The sun is rapidly going down outside, and Kenny has to withhold a groan when he hears someone parking out in the lot. He's technically not supposed to close up until the last customer is serviced, even if that customer shows up one minute before closing time.

"Oh, hey, the mail's here!" Butters says. "How're ya doing, Bebe?"

"I'm fine." Her voice is a little tight. Kenny knows she hates him, and having her as their regular mail delivery person is a daily exercise in awkward politeness. He finishes the oil change and slides out from under the car, still on his back while she stares down at him, her arms crossed over her chest. She looks hot in her mail uniform, always wears the pants way too tight, just like high school. Her looks were not the reason he rejected her advances a few years back, but he can't exactly explain himself, so she assumes he just thinks he's too good for her. He's kind of surprised that Wendy hasn't filled her in, but she did promise never to tell anyone what Kenny was doing for drug money when she and Butters found him.

"Howdy," Kenny says.

"Hello," Bebe says. "I've got something here for you, certified mail. You'll have to sign."

"Right-o. Let me just wash my hands." He gets up with a groan and goes to the sink. He uses Lava soap, which makes his skin raw and smells like industrial strength floor cleaner, and even this doesn't always get the grime off completely. The only thing that cleans him thoroughly is a brand new body. He still wakes up in his old bed at his parents' house from time to time. No matter how public his death was, he gets in trouble for skipping work when he returns without an explanation that anyone would believe.

"Certified mail, huh?" Butters says, peeking at the envelope Bebe is holding up. "Fancy!"

"I hope it's not a lawsuit," Kenny says.

"Oh, Kenny, who would sue you?"

"Thanks," Bebe says when Kenny has signed. She pulls a green postcard off the back of the envelope, which is largish and stiff, the words DO NOT BEND stamped on the front.

"Doesn't Bebe look nice today, Kenny?" Butters asks. He's bouncing on his heels, doing that match-making thing that he does when he decides that Kenny needs to be gently eased back into human companionship. He doesn't know about Bebe's drunken pass at Kenny, or the excruciatingly embarrassing fallout. Bebe and Kenny exchange a look.

"Yeah, she looks great," Kenny says. "New, uh. Lipstick, maybe?"

Bebe rolls her eyes. "How's your sister?" she asks.

"Still pregnant."

"How far along is she?"

"About six months. I'm taking her for a checkup next week."

"Lucky her," Bebe says. "I mean, to have you to help."

Kenny nods. Bebe always seems vaguely jealous when they discuss Karen's pregnancy, as if she's worried that she'll never find herself in a similar state. She's one of the only girls in South Park who didn't marry young. Even Wendy surprised everyone by settling down with local boy and remaining in town.

"Well, since the baby's father is a piece of shit," Kenny says. "Somebody's got to take her to appointments."

"Did you ever find out who it was?" Bebe asks, lowering her voice. Kenny shakes his head, though he's known from the start. Karen made him swear never to tell anyone. The baby's father is an aspiring politician whose reputation would be ruined if people found out that he'd knocked up the white trash McCormick girl. He's providing for the baby under the condition that it remains a secret. Kenny wants to sue his ass and get legitimate child support for Karen, but she refuses to press charges, doesn't want to go through a long and painful paternity investigation. Kenny can understand that, but he's going to see Craig Tucker brought to justice one way or another, whenever he can figure out how to do it without upsetting Karen, who may be a moron but is his only real family.

Bebe leaves, her mail bag bouncing against her ass as she walks back to her truck. Kenny had wanted to do her that night, at least in the early stages. They were both drunk, at some lame party thrown by Clyde. Through his drunken stupor, Kenny actually thought he was ready to have sex for the first time since he stopped charging for it. He hasn't tried it again, sober or otherwise.

"What a charming young lady, don't you think?" Butters says, rubbing his fists together as Kenny tears open the envelope. "Bebe, I mean. Don't you think she's swell, Kenny?"

"Yeah, Butters, she's great." He reaches into the envelope and pulls out a glossy photo. There's nothing else inside the package, and nothing written on the back of the photo, which is a picture of two guys walking through a parking lot together. Kenny is excited for a moment, thinking someone might be offering him a helping hand in blackmailing Craig, but when he walks over to his desk and holds the picture up to the light, he sees that the dark-haired man in the picture isn't Craig at all. He's a guy Kenny has never seen before, wearing a coat over doctor's scrubs and talking to a shorter guy with red hair.

"Wait," he says, softly, to himself. He pulls the picture closer to his face, frowning down at it. Little things begin to stand out, each one more disturbing than the last: something about the dark-haired man's jockish posture, and his slightly lopsided grin. The red head's smile is self-conscious, and his eyes are intelligent, exacting, though there's nothing but admiration on his face as he looks at the other man.

"Who are those fellas?" Butters asks. Kenny's fingers have begun to shake, the photo still clamped tightly between them.

"Butters," Kenny says. His voice barely works. "Remember when we were kids, and I said - I told everyone there had been two boys, and that when I woke up one morning they were gone, and everyone else had forgotten them?"

"Well, sure." Butters looks concerned. Kenny knows that people don't like to be reminded of his flirtation with insanity. "Heck, I even remember their names. Kyle and Stan, right?"

"Right." Just hearing someone else say those names takes the strength from Kenny's legs. He sits down heavily, his ass almost missing the desk chair as he falls into it. He's almost afraid to look at the picture again, but when he does he's even more certain than he was before. This is them. Stan and Kyle, all grown up and still together, somewhere.

"Are you okay?" Butters asks. He touches Kenny's shoulder and peers into his face. "Do you need some water? You're all pale."

"Who sent me this picture?" Kenny asks. He grabs the envelope and examines it, but there's no return address. "Bebe, is Bebe - hey!" He jumps out of the chair and runs to the garage door, but Bebe's mail truck is gone. Cursing, Kenny starts pacing, waiting for his heart to settle down long enough to give his mind a chance to catch up. He hugs the photo to his chest when the wind blows, already worried that someone will take it away from him.

"What's the matter, Kenny?" Butters looks terrified, and Kenny feels guilty, but he can't calm down, not about this. He's known all along that he wasn't crazy, they were really here, though even their parents had no memory of them when Kenny returned to life and assumed Cartman was just playing a trick on him by asking him who the fuck Kyle and Stan were.

"I think this is them," Kenny says to Butters, though he's positive. Tentatively, he holds the picture out and lets Butters take it. The sunlight is almost gone, and Butters has to bring it up to his face, squinting.

"Well, those aren't little boys," Butters says. "I thought you said they were our age?"

"They were, Butters. This is them _now_. They grew up - they're still alive! Oh, Jesus, fuck, goddamn -" Kenny paces again, dragging his hands through his hair. It's been so long since he held out any kind of hope of seeing Stan and Kyle again. He didn't expect to feel this giddy, and didn't expect to be terrified, too. He's already worried that he'll lose them again, that the trail has gone cold.

"Do you recognize that place where they're walking?" Kenny asks. He hovers over Butters, and they both peer down at the picture.

"Just looks like a boring old parking lot," Butters says.

"You can see the license plates on the cars!" Kenny says. "Well, sort of. I can't tell what state they're from, not at this resolution. Maybe we can have this blown up. Does Cartman have that kind of equipment at the station?"

"Sure, I think so. You want me to take this picture to him?"

"No." Kenny snatches it back so fast that Butters flinches, startled. "Sorry," Kenny says. "I might bring it to Cartman, but. I kind of don't want to let it out of my sight."

"Oh, I understand," Butters says, fists knocking together.

"It's not that I think you'd lose it, it's just - something happened, Butters. To everyone in town but me. You're the one who convinced me this wasn't just some elaborate joke, or government conspiracy. You really don't remember them at all, and I know you wouldn't lie to me."

"I wouldn't, Kenny, honest."

"I know. Something, like, _physically_ happened to you guys while I was, uh. Elsewhere."

"Elsewhere?" Butters says. He gives Kenny the look of sweet confusion that always makes him want to trying explaining his predicament for the ten thousandth time, but every time he's tried Butters just gets scared and upset, and never remembers. Kenny shakes his head.

"It doesn't matter why I'm the only one who remembers," he says, though he's always suspected that it might, considering that everyone in town forgets his death on a regular basis. "I don't think that was part of the plan - it was like some kind of glitch. What's important is that this must have happened for some fucked up reason, and it wasn't just to get rid of them forever, because this is them, Butters, and they look okay, and, shit. They're still together."

If there's one thing he remembers best about Kyle and Stan, it's that as long as they were together, they were okay. Butters sighs.

"So now what do we do?" he asks, so fretfully that Kenny laughs.

"I don't know," he says. "But obviously someone wants me to know that they're still together, and I don't think this person is behind the reason for their disappearance. Whoever or whatever made everyone forget them wouldn't want me finding out that they're still alive. I have to - I have to think about this, I have to come up with some kind of plan."

"Well, I'll help!" Butters says, beaming. "But, uh, not tonight, I'm afraid. I gotta be getting home to Eric."

"I guess he'll be wanting his dinner," Kenny says, not bothering to conceal his disgust. Butters misses it anyway, still smiling.

"He sure will," he says. "And, oh, heck, I don't think I'll have time to clean that fish tank. But this is real exciting, Kenny - your friends are alive!"

"They were your friends, too," Kenny says. He looks down at the picture again. "We went to Stan's tenth birthday party together. That was just a couple of months before they disappeared." He looks up at Butters, who has heard this story a million times. "You got him Legos," Kenny says, glumly. "Stan. For his birthday that year."

"Oh." Butters is nervous about this, his fists rubbing together audibly. "Well, we'll figure it out, Kenny, I know it. Whoever sent this picture must want to help us, like you said."

"C'mere," Kenny says. He gives Butters a hug, lifting him off the ground a bit as he does so. It's the closest he's come to physical affection since the bad old days. Butters hugs him back. He smells like leather and cocoa.

"Get on home to Cartman," Kenny says, releasing him. "I wouldn't want to get you in trouble."

"Oh, I reckon I'm already in trouble over the whole fish tank thing," Butters says. "But I'd better be heading out. Thanks again for the oil change. How much do I owe you?"

"Don't worry about it, I'll put it on Cartman's tab."

"Alright, then. G'night, Kenny. Good luck coming up with a plan to find your - our friends, I mean. Whatever it is, you know I'll help you."

"I know, Butters. Goodnight. And if Cartman ever gives you a hard time, if he ever gives you the tiniest fucking bruise -"

"I know, I know," Butters says, backing toward the car. "But it's not like when we were kids, I promise. Eric takes care of me now." Butters smiles. He wants so badly for Kenny to believe this, and it's true that Kenny can't imagine Butters lying to him. "Don't worry about me, I'm just fine."

Butters gets in the Hummer and drives off, and Kenny walks to the door of the garage, watching until the Hummer's back tail lights have disappeared. Butters grew up in a pretty abusive household, and the fact that he doesn't have any problems with the way Cartman treats him isn't exactly comforting. Kenny always inspects him for bruises as surreptitiously as possible, just like he did when they were kids and he was sure Butters' parents were beating him. He never found any bruises back then, either, but not every type of abuse is physical. Kenny gave up trying to save people around the time Stan and Kyle disappeared without a trace; his Mysterion days are over. But Butters saved him, and he can't let go of the idea that he might return the favor, no matter how many times Butters insists that he's happy living under Cartman's iron reign.

He closes up the shop and walks out to his own car, which is nothing too impressive, though for a 1978 Bonneville it's in pretty good condition. He likes old cars with big, yacht-like personalities. If he had a girlfriend, she could sit right next to him while he drove, her head on his shoulder. He's never known what that's like. He had a few girls before the hooker days, but he was stupid and reckless and definitely not boyfriend material. Kenny McCormick was worth one good fuck that you'd feel guilty about later. Eventually he parlayed this into a business venture, though in that case he was usually the one getting fucked. He never had much female clientele.

He combats his gloomy mood by thinking about the picture that he's got tucked inside his work shirt. Kyle and Stan are both smiling in the photo, and they don't seem to be on the run. Stan was wearing scrubs; could it be possible that he became a doctor? Kenny considers the fact that even Kyle and Stan might not remember who they are, though they must. In the photo, they're looking at each other the same way they always did: like they can't believe they're lucky enough to be on the same planet together, let alone living in the same small town.

When he comes through the door, Karen is on the sofa, the only light in their apartment coming from the TV. She's under a fuzzy fleece blanket that they've had since they were kids, and she pulls it back up over her chin when she sees that it's just Kenny.

"Hey," she says, listlessly. Even under the big blanket, her stomach is obvious. "Did you bring dinner?"

"No," Kenny says. "You've got to stop eating fast food, remember? The doctor said."

Karen groans. "Crap's still crap, whether we cook it here or get it from McDonald's."

"I'm not fixing you crap." Kenny flicks the lights on in the kitchen, which is still dirty from last night's dinner. He grabs a beer and sees Burger King wrappers in the trash can when he throws the cap away. "I'm making you tacos," he says. "Chicken tacos."

"You're gonna cook a chicken? I have to see this shit."

"They're called Tyson Organic strips, okay?" He opens the freezer to make sure they're still there. "If I bake them they'll be better than that fried crap."

"You love that fried crap, too."

"Yeah, I know, but I'm trying to be the fucking adult here and maybe not poison your baby before it's even born."

"I'm not poisoning him!" Karen shouts, furious in an instant. She starts rubbing her belly through the blanket, glowering at him. "Is it my fault I can't afford to hire a fucking personal chef?"

"You should be able to," Kenny says. "Craig could afford it."

"Oh, God," Karen says, moaning. "Don't fucking push it, okay?"

"Let's not fight," Kenny says flatly, because fighting with his sister about the shitty situation that they're both in makes him want to stick a crack pipe in his mouth and tweak until he dies. He hasn't died since Karen got pregnant. If he did, she could be alone for months, and she would hate him when he returned without an excuse, would accuse him of going on a binge. His longest absence from the world of the living was two months and five days. It's another reason he can't really have a girlfriend.

He makes the tacos while Karen watches Law & Order, wondering if he could trust Cartman to help him with his investigation of Stan and Kyle's disappearance. For all he knows, Cartman was involved in making them disappear. Kenny wouldn't put it past him; life certainly improved for Cartman once those two were gone. With Kenny too preoccupied with Stan and Kyle's disappearance to pay him much attention, Butters lost any ability he'd ever had to say no to Cartman, and Kenny doesn't even want to think about what age they were when this arrangement began to serve Cartman's sexual needs along with all the others. They were both a little oversexualized as kids, something they had in common with Kenny. Without the influence of Stan and Kyle's innocence, things in South Park got weird fast. He cringes when he thinks of them finding out what happened to him after they were gone. It was hard enough having Wendy there when he hit rock bottom.

"Did you get your check from Mr. Wonderful today?" Kenny asks when he brings Karen her plate: three very decent chicken tacos, shredded lettuce and everything. She takes them and sighs.

"Not yet," she says.

"Dammit, alright. I'm calling him."

"Don't! Kenny, don't, you'll just piss him off. He said it's in the mail. Maybe your friend the mail carrier has been stealing checks."

"Yeah, that's more likely than Craig just continuing to be a piece of shit. If it's not here tomorrow, I'm calling."

"Whatever," Karen says. She takes a bite of a taco and chews, some sour cream lingering at the corner of her lips. "There are kinda good," she says, her voice muffled by half-chewed food.

"You're welcome," Kenny says, sarcastically. He sits down beside her and slings his arm around her shoulders. She's a pain in his ass, but he loves her, and he's not going to abandon her the way he did when he was high all the time. He'd sent some of the money he made getting fucked in alleyways back home, but his mother confiscated most of it for her own drug problem, and that wasn't what Karen needed, anyway. She needs support, a real family. Kenny does what he can.

"He's kicking," Karen says when Kenny has started to drift off, his third beer sweating in his hand and Karen still cuddled up at his side. Kenny lifts his head and yawns, looking down at her belly. "Feel it," she says, taking his hand. "He always does this an hour after I eat."

"Wow." Kenny has felt this before, and he does his best to act impressed every time. The miracle of life doesn't really move him, but he does like the way Karen gets when she's smiling down at her stomach, holding Kenny's hand over the kicking baby. She looks hopeful, and young, the way she did before Kenny left home. He kisses the top of her head.

"Everything's going to be okay," he says. "As long as the baby doesn't look like that shithead Craig."

"He won't," Karen says.

"You promise?"

"I promise," she says. "He won't look like Craig."

She goes to bed soon afterward, and Kenny cleans up the kitchen, his eyelids drooping. He wonders where Stan and Kyle are right now. If there's any justice in the world, they're cuddled up in bed together, oblivious to the fact that Kenny has been tortured by their disappearance for sixteen years. He remembers being nine years old, waking up for a piss during a slumber party and coming back into Kyle's basement to see that the two of them had gravitated together in their sleep, Stan's hand closed around the edge of Kyle's sleeping bag. Cartman would have called them fags, but Kenny thought it was kind of nice. He remembers being grateful that they had at least disappeared together, or at the same time. If one of them had been left behind it would have been heartbreaking. Whoever remained might have had his memory wiped like the rest of the town, but those two could lose every memory they had of each other and still know that something was missing.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** This chapter might seem like a tone change or kind of obscure in relation to other things that are going on, but this POV/situation is important to the overall story, so bear with me! This is the final POV I'll be using - each chapter will cycle through the four POVs in the order of these first four chapters, and since I'm going out of town starting Thursday, I'm going to post Stan's next chapter tomorrow and Kyle's on Wednesday. Thanks to everyone who is reading, and to those who have left reviews!

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><p>Butters worries about Kenny as he drives home, turning on the Hummer's windshield wipers when a light snow begins to fall. It's been years since Kenny mentioned his imaginary friends, but Butters isn't surprised to learn that he hasn't forgotten them. When they were kids, Kenny would get frantic trying to convince anyone who would listen that they had all once known two boys named Stan and Kyle, and that he'd woken up one morning to find that everyone but him had forgotten them. Butters had felt terrible; back then he assumed he <em>had<em> forgotten these boys, even when everyone else thought Kenny was crazy. Butters had Kenny draw him pictures of Stan and Kyle, and he still remembers Kenny's simple illustrations: in every picture, Kyle was wearing a green hat over his bright red hair, and Stan wore a blue hat with a little red poof ball on top. Butters wanted to remember them, and tried as hard as he could, sometimes managing to dream about them, but ultimately he felt like he'd let Kenny down. Eric tells him that Kenny is just crazy from too many years of smoking crack, and Butters doesn't think that's true, but he has come to accept that the boys in the green and blue hats probably never existed.

"There you are, Jesus!" Eric calls when Butters comes in through the kitchen door, his arms loaded with bags of groceries, ammo and Snacky Cakes. "About freaking time! I'm starving to death in here."

"Sorry, Eric," Butters says. "I got a little held up at the oil change place. And I might as well tell you right now: I didn't get a chance to clean the fish tank."

"Goddammit, Butters, do you want the fish to die?"

"No! I don't, honest! I just got caught up with everything else –"

"You have the easiest job in the world, Butters. You're a freaking house husband. And you can't even do that right?"

"I'm sorry, Eric," Butters says, mumbling. He stops putting away the groceries and walks into the living room, where Eric is on the couch, still in his police uniform, his boots on the coffee table and his gun belt draped over the arm of the couch. "Do I need a spanking?" Butters asks, blushing.

"Ugh, God, maybe later. Go put that pizza in – you got the pizza, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, start the goddamn oven and then get over here," Eric says, pulling down the zipper on his uniform pants. He spreads his legs, and the flush on Butters' cheeks creeps down through his chest and along the insides of his thighs. He bites his lip to keep from grinning and hurries back into the kitchen. His hands shake as he snips the frozen pizza out of its plastic pouch, and it's silly to get excited like this after almost six years of living here with Eric, but he can't help it.

"The pizza'll be ready in twenty minutes," Butters says, jogging back into the living room.

"Fuck, that long?" Eric groans and tugs his pants open wider, reaching into his boxer shorts. He pulls out his cock, fat and pink and so naughty-looking against the zipper of his uniform. Butters licks his lips. "You'd better make this a fucking amazing blow job, to distract me from my extreme hunger."

"Y-yes, sir!" Butters scrambles over to him, climbing between his legs and sinking down onto his knees, between the couch and the coffee table. Eric huffs irritably, opening his knees more widely. Butters can tell he's not actually very annoyed. His cock is standing up for Butters' tongue, getting bigger.

"That's right," Eric says as Butters starts lapping at him. Eric puts a hand in his hair and nudges him closer, sighing as Butters opens for him, swallowing him down. Butters loves this part of his day so much that it makes his face hot, even though nobody's watching, just Eric. When he was a kid, he couldn't imagine anything better than hot chocolate after a long, cold winter day, but now he knows there's nothing better than coming home to this: Eric's cock so hot and hard on his tongue, Eric's legs clamped tight around his sides, his fingers sliding through Butters' hair when he does a good job.

"Yeah, _fuck_ yeah," Eric says, mumbling, his head falling back against the couch cushions. "Who, ah, who worked hard all day for you?"

"Mmph – you did," Butters says, pulling off, panting. He meets Eric's eyes and gives the head of his cock a little lick, knows he likes the way that looks.

"And what'd you do all day, huh?" Eric pets his hair, his eyelids heavy as he watches Butters lick around the rim.

"Mhm, I thought about sucking you," Butters says. It would be more accurate to say, _I thought about you_, but he knows what Eric likes to hear.

"So, what do you say? Since I'm nice enough to let you suck me?"

"Thank you," Butters says, breathless. He's so hard, sneaking his fingers down between his legs to touch the fly of his pants.

"What would you do without this dick, hmm?" Eric asks, playing with Butters' bottom lip. Butters moans sadly at the thought of having to live without this, and he shakes his head.

"I don't know, sir," he says, whining.

"Yes, you do, Butters. Tell me where you'd be without me."

"Ah – on the street, sir. Sucking crackheads for money."

"That's right. Now go get me a beer, and then suck on my balls until that pizza timer goes off."

Having an erection makes getting to the fridge and back kind of difficult, but Butters manages, delivering the beer with a kiss to Eric's cheek that makes him grunt in annoyance. Butters hurries to get back to work, and closes his eyes while he laps at Eric's balls, which could use a washing after being stuffed into his uniform all day. He lets his mind wander while Eric groans and gulps from his beer, his hand heavy over the crown of Butters' head. Normally, Butters would be completely content, focusing on the task at hand and hoping he'll do well enough to earn a few minutes of pre-dinner cuddling, but what happened at the garage is still bugging him. Kenny is so lonely, even though he pretends not to be. Butters was lucky to find Eric when he was very young, and he's had him ever since, though Eric didn't always treat him as well as he does now. He doesn't know how to help Kenny, especially when there are so few eligible ladies left in South Park these days.

"Gonna come," Eric says when Butters is deep throating him again, and Butters sits back on his knees, letting Eric's hand slide from his hair. He opens his mouth and closes his eyes, and he's barely got them shut when Eric whimpers and goes off, hitting Butters' cheeks and eyelids before resting the tip of his cock against Butters' bottom lip, letting him lick some into his mouth. Butters moans to show Eric how much he likes this, though honestly he could do without the taste of come. It's not really that it tastes good, though he would tell Eric it did if he asked. It's just that he likes being the one who does this, and who gets to hear that little whimper that Eric doesn't try to hide anymore.

"Holy shit, Butters," Eric says, slumping back against the couch. "Goddamn. Here." He reaches for the hand towel that they keep beside the couch and gives it to Butters, who always makes sure to put a fresh one there in the morning, since using a crusty one from the day before is far less pleasant. He wipes his face clean and climbs up into Eric's lap, looping his arms around Eric's neck.

"Was that good?" he asks.

"Fuck," Eric says, muttering, and it seems like an affirmative answer. He grabs Butters' ass with both hands and tugs him closer. "C'mere, you little cocksucker." Eric kisses him, sucking the taste of his come from Butter's tongue, and Butters whines happily. His spine gets all melty, and he presses his palm over the badge that's pinned to Eric's uniform shirt, shivering at the feeling of that cool metal against his skin.

"You want to come?" Eric asks. He claws his hand around Butters' trapped erection. Butters whines and nods, can't believe that he might get to do it before dinner, though Eric could just be teasing him.

"Please," Butters says, because Eric seems to be in the kind of mood where he might indulge begging. "Please, sir, it, _ah_, it's so hard."

"I still say you should be able to come just from sucking me," Eric says. He takes his hand from Butters' crotch and holds his chin, looking into his eyes as if they'll tell him whether or not Butters deserves to come. Butters tries to look as sweet and deserving as possible, leaning forward to touch his nose to the tip of Eric's.

The oven timer goes off, shrill and insistent. Butters sighs, because he knows what that means. Eric smirks and flicks his head toward the kitchen.

"Too late," he says. "Pizza time."

"Yes, sir."

"And get me another beer while you're at it," Eric says, slapping Butters' ass.

Butters is almost dizzy as he walks to the kitchen, his skin buzzing with desperation. He's tempted to rub his cock against the door handle on the refrigerator when he pulls it open, Eric's beers clanging against each other.

"How many pieces can I have?" Butters calls as he's slicing up the pizza.

"I don't know," Eric says. "C'mere for a second."

Butters obeys, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He's still hard, flushed, but he's accustomed to having to wait, and knows it'll just feel that much better when he's able to come after dinner.

"Lift up your shirt," Eric says, and Butters does so. He doesn't even care that much about pizza right now, can only think about the ache in his cock and how good it will feel to finally crawl into bed. It's been a long day.

"Turn to the left," Eric says, and Butters does, not even bothering to suck in his stomach. Eric doesn't want him getting fat, and Butters doesn't want that, either, but he hates being put on diets. Sometimes he's supposed to lose weight, and sometimes Eric insists he needs to gain a few pounds. He likes Butters to have a very particular softness, small but not skinny. He once threatened to get Butters A-cup implants if he doesn't maintain his natural ones.

"You can have two," Eric says. Butters nods and returns to the kitchen, where he fixes Eric's plate first. He brings it to him with the beer, then returns with his own plate, some napkins, and a glass of milk for himself. Eric makes him drink beer with him sometimes, but Butters doesn't really like it. He mostly gets sleepy and mixes up his words.

They watch _Survivor_ while they eat, but Butters can't really pay attention. He's thinking about Kenny again, though not about the picture he got in the mail or the missing friends he thinks he can find. Kenny wants Butters to leave Eric. He thinks Butters would be better off without him. Kenny doesn't know a lot about love, and it makes Butters sad, though he's sure that Kenny could learn someday, from the right person. He wipes his lips clean with his napkin and leans against Eric's side, unbuttoning his uniform shirt for him. His belt is already open, along with his fly, though he's otherwise made himself decent for dinner.

"Do you want another beer?" Butters asks, his fingers moving swiftly down Eric's chest, revealing the white undershirt that Butters ironed for him on laundry day. He likes thinking about that when he's doing the laundry: clean undershirts help Eric fight crime.

"Maybe in a minute," Eric says, handing Butters his empty bottle. Butters sets it on the side table and returns to his unbuttoning. He sneaks a hand under the shirt and presses his palm over Eric's heartbeat, beneath the weight of his badge.

"Kenny was the one who did the oil change," Butters says.

"Yeah? What's new with that deadbeat?"

"Don't call him that, Eric. You know he's my best friend."

"Only because you give him handouts. I hope you didn't tip him."

"No, I didn't tip him. But a funny thing happened when I was there."

"Yeah?" Eric gives him a dangerous look, and Butters tries not to smile. Eric is jealous of Kenny, even though Butters has told him a thousand times that Kenny doesn't like guys. The fact that Kenny has an arrest for male prostitution on his record makes Eric skeptical, but he doesn't understand Kenny the way Butters does.

"He got a picture in the mail," Butters says. He's not sure that he should tell Eric this, but he's worried about Kenny and needs to talk to someone. "He said it looked like those boys he was always talking about when we were kids, the ones who disappeared, who nobody else remembered? He said it was them, all grown up."

"Oh, Jesus Christ." Eric groans and rubs his hand over his face. "If I have to start hearing about that shit again I'm going to kill the bastard."

"What if were true, though?" Butters says. He chews on the tips of his fingers, fretting. "What if we really did have some friends who we forgot?"

"Butters, Kenny's brain is so fried from crack that he doesn't know what color the goddamn sky is. Don't listen to his bullshit, and for the love of fucking God, don't repeat it to me. Are you ready for dessert?"

"Sure! Do you want ice cream or Snacky Cakes?"

"Neither," Eric says. His eyes darken, and he reaches up under Butters' sweater. Butters shivers as Eric's hand moves over his skin. He still gets hot all over when Eric touches him, still waits all day for this. Eric finds one of Butters' nipples and twists, making him squeak. "I want _dessert_, Butters, and I want it served on the coffee table."

"Yes, sir," Butters says, trying to surge in for a kiss, but Eric leans back and points to the coffee table. Butters hurries to undress, flinging off his sweater and wiggling out of his jeans and underwear. Sometimes Eric likes it when he leaves his socks on, but usually only if they've got something cute on them, like little bunnies. These are just normal white socks, so Butters pulls them off before clambering up onto to the coffee table and facing the television, his breath already coming hard. He hears Eric kneeling down behind him and braces himself, resting his forehead on his folded arms. Eric just teases him at first, pulling Butters' cheeks apart and flicking his tongue between them, light and quick. Butters is already groaning, his cock filling up again.

There are no thoughts about Kenny or anything else once Eric really gets going, the wet heat of his tongue melting Butters down to a mindless thing. Every nerve ending in his body seems to have relocated to his ass, and Eric lets him buck and roll his hips back, steadying him when he gets too wild. He calms Butters back into submission by rubbing his thumb over the tattoo he had Butters get last year, just under the curve of his left ass cheek. It's Eric's badge number, 7251, and Butters feels like those numbers are being inked into him all over again when Eric runs his thumb across them, his other fingers digging into Butters' thigh, holding him still. Butters never feels more owned than he does when Eric touches his tattoo, and on the fifth or sixth pass of Eric's thumb he cries out and comes all over the coffee table.

He doesn't like getting fucked while his knees and elbows are braced on the hard wooden coffee table, and he's afraid that's what will happen when Eric has him stay in place while he fetches the lube and slicks himself. Butters whimpers with relief when Eric lifts him off the table and pulls him into his lap, still facing the television, Eric's arms locked around his chest. Butters is shaking, weak from his orgasm and loose-limbed as Eric pushes into him. He opens his legs and wraps his hands around Eric's arms to feel his muscles tighten as he sinks in deeper. Eric was chubby when they were kids, but in high school he got strong, though he never really got rid of his belly. Butters doesn't mind; he likes the way it forces him to arch when Eric fucks him like this, Butters' body curving back against his. Eric picks him up by the backs of his knees, hoisting him easily before slamming him back down, and Butters can only yelp and moan, getting hard again for how helpless this makes him feel, wide open and claimed. When Eric comes he groans and holds Butters down to take it, his hands clamped over Butters' thighs as if he might try to get away. Butters sighs and slumps back, his head tipping onto Eric's shoulder, chest heaving. Through the window behind the couch, he can see the snow still falling outside.

"We left the curtains open," Butters says, panting. He touches his half-hard cock absently, too tired to want to do anything about it.

"Who – the fuck cares," Eric says. "Everybody, _ah_. Everybody knows I fuck you."

Butters laughs breathlessly at the idea, which still seems impossible, though he knows it's true. When they were in school Eric would threaten to kill him painfully if he ever told anyone about the things they did when they were alone in Eric's room. Butters was equally as terrified of someone finding out, not for the sake of his reputation but to prevent his parents from grounding him until he was eighteen.

He pulls off of Eric and doesn't even reach for the come towel, just turns and dumps himself onto Eric's chest, which is still heaving, so warm. Butters moans and shuts his eyes, his face pressed to Eric's neck.

"You're getting come on my uniform," Eric says. Butters shifts, but that only causes more to leak out of him, onto Eric's pants.

"I'll take it to the dry cleaner tomorrow," Butters says, mumbling, already half-asleep. Eric grumbles some vague complaint about dry cleaning bills. His hand is on the small of Butters' back, his fingers tensed possessively. Even when they were young and Butters risked the wrath of his parents to sneak into Eric's bedroom like a hypnotist's victim, he never thought he'd actually want to belong to Eric Cartman. He already did, he just didn't know it yet.

Butters sleeps thinly while Eric watches late night TV, and wakes when he feels Eric reaching back to shut the curtains. The sweat on Butters' skin has dried, and even with the heat pumping at full blast he can feel a chill from the window. He squirms closer to Eric, wanting to pull his uniform shirt around his back and have Eric button him into it.

"Quit shivering, goddammit, I'm trying to watch TV," Eric says, speaking softly, like he's not sure if Butters is awake. Butters keeps his eyes closed as Eric drags a blanket over and wraps it around him, shutting out the chill. So that's why he shut the curtains. This is the thing he wouldn't want anyone to see, the thing that Butters can't explain to Kenny. Butters smiles against Eric's throat, hoping he won't feel it. He must not, because he just turns down the volume on the TV and cups his hand around the back of Butters' neck.

Butters wakes up when he's being carried up the stairs, Eric huffing more in complaint at having to do it than with any great effort. Being carried like this makes Butters feel so small, a featherweight like he was in high school, when Eric had his most dramatic growth spurt and Butters was still miniature, always waiting for Eric to hoist him up, pin him to something, and hopefully kiss him before having his way with him. Upstairs in their bedroom, Eric lowers him into the bed, and Butters rolls over to feel around until he finds Clyde Frog. He tucks the stuffed animal under his arm and nuzzles at it, an old trick that still works.

"Quit hogging that," Eric says when he returns from brushing his teeth. Uniform shucked, he's in his undershirt and boxer shorts when he spoons himself up behind Butters, holding on to him in lieu of Clyde Frog. Butters settles back against him and listens to the quiet of the house and the wet whisper of the snow against the windowpane. Kenny was wrong about the Hummer belonging to Butters, too. Certain things are still Eric's alone, but this house belongs to both of them now. Most of the furniture was Eric's mother's, but Butters' influence has crept into the decor in the past few years. He picked out these bedsheets, and the shower curtains, the dishtowels. Kenny tells him he needs to have his own life, but this is his life: Eric takes care of him, and he takes care of Eric. He wishes Kenny could let go of his idea that something here in South Park is missing.

Everything is just as it should be.


	5. Chapter 5

Stan has never awakened to find someone sleeping beside him. He's never shared a bed, at least not that he can remember. He stays motionless, not wanting to wake Kyle, who is curled against his chest, both of them under the mound of blankets that Stan set out for Kyle before retiring to his bedroom last night. Now, watching Kyle sleep, his cheeks flushed with heat, Stan feels like he knew this would happen. He wants to kiss Kyle's face, to rub his hands over Kyle's sweat-damp skin, but it's not like he's gay or anything. He just wants to stay here forever, under the blankets with Kyle. He just has a boner for the way Kyle breathes, and wants to know what his lips taste like, because they look so fucking sweet.

He allows himself to imagine pushing his hand up under Kyle's t-shirt and brushing his fingertips around the edge of one nipple, rubbing until it's hard, until Kyle moans softly in his sleep, eyebrows creasing. Stan smashes his lips together and makes himself think of something unsexy, like the fact that Kyle's boyfriend is probably waiting outside with the police, campaigning to reclaim him. It doesn't make sense that someone would want to take Kyle away from him. He belongs here. Stan knew it as soon as Kyle climbed into his car.

"Stan?"

Kyle doesn't seem surprised to see him, and he says Stan's name like he's awakened on countless winter mornings and found him there. Stan smiles, his hand trembling on Kyle's hip.

"Did you sleep okay?" Stan asks, whispering. "I mean, after, um."

"I had a bad dream," Kyle says. His voice is small, and his face is so close to Stan's that he can feel the heat of Kyle's breath, which smells like Coors Light. "It's the same one I've had since I was a kid."

"How often do you have it?"

"A lot. All the time." Kyle moans and sits up, rubbing his face with his hands. Stan had been hoping they could stay on the couch for at least an hour, talking about his dream or whatever else. He sits up, one of his legs sliding over the edge of the couch.

"Do you want some breakfast?" Stan asks. "I don't really have anything but cereal, but there's a little diner we could walk to, it's pretty good."

"Can I have a glass of milk?" Kyle asks, and Stan sprints for the kitchen to get it for him, moving as gracefully as possible with a half-erect cock. He manages to lose the boner while pouring a glass of milk for Kyle and one for himself, and has to remind himself not to think about Kyle's nipples as he walks back into the living room. Kyle is sitting with the blankets pooled around his waist, hands in his lap. Stan's shirt is two sizes too big for him, and he looks edible, ready to be dipped in milk.

"Thanks," Kyle says. Stan sits beside him, and they drink their milk in the gray light from the cloud-covered sunrise. Stan gulps his whole glass down in four swallows. Kyle takes dainty sips, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand between each one.

"So, what do you want for breakfast?" Stan asks. He grabs Kyle's knee. "Or did you want to talk about your dream?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Kyle says, grinning. "I've spent the past sixteen years talking about that fucker. Let's eat."

Stan goes into his bedroom to throw on some clothes, leaving the door partway open, though not enough for Kyle to see inside without very deliberately peeking. He's kind of disappointed when Kyle doesn't try it. When he emerges from the bedroom Kyle has dressed in the clothes he was wearing yesterday.

"Are you sure you don't want some fresh socks and underwear?" Stan asks.

"This is going to sound kind of snotty," Kyle says. "Considering I just spent the night, uh. Cuddling with you. But that's a little too intense for me. Exchanging underwear."

"Oh, I know," Stan says, laughing. "I mean, I was kidding." Kyle used his toothbrush last night. Stan had never expected to find that concept erotic, and shouldn't have been surprised to find Kyle's milk drinking technique stimulating, too.

"I'm afraid to look at my phone," Kyle says as they leave the apartment.

"So don't," Stan says. Fuck anybody who has Kyle's phone number. Stan still doesn't, though he could lift it from Kyle's admittance forms. Not the same, though.

"That's funny," Kyle says. "No one's ever told me to avoid the things I'm afraid of. Usually it's like, 'ooh, you're afraid of something? Let's see how we can work it into your everyday life on a more regular basis!"

"Jesus," Stan says. He wants to punch a lot of the people in Kyle's life, so far.

"Well, the idea is that I won't be afraid anymore. Like, the mystery will fade away and I'll realize I'm being ridiculous."

"Does it work?"

"Not really, but that might be my fault."

"I don't think it's your fault," Stan says. They come to the bottom of the stairs, and he holds the lobby door open for Kyle, letting the icy air in while Kyle stands there giving him a slightly suspicious smile.

"What?" Stan says.

"Nothing, just. You're always on my side, when I complain about this stuff. I guess that makes sense, since we just met. If you knew me – if you had to be around me all the time, you'd probably agree with them."

"Them?"

"My large and varied network of therapists."

Kyle walks out into the snow-crusted morning, lifting his shoulders against the cold. Stan takes off his scarf and loops it around Kyle's neck, knotting it for him.

"You have some kind of savior thing, don't you?" Kyle says, his voice muffled by the scarf.

"Only when it comes to amnesiacs."

Kyle grins, and Stan can see it mostly in his eyes, his mouth hidden behind the scarf. Stan walks forward, bumping his shoulder against Kyle's to signal that he should walk this way, follow alongside him. It feels like something he's done a thousand times, and Kyle responds instantly, falling in step with Stan as they head toward the diner. The wind is so cold that Stan feels bruised by it, and he's glad that Kyle has the scarf. He's got less body fat, needs it more.

"Do you get the sense that you grew up someplace cold?" Stan asks, hoping this isn't a rude question. He doesn't have any feelings about where he might or might not have grown up, but New Mexico always felt like an alien planet to him.

"I don't know," Kyle says. "I guess I grew up in America, or so isolated among Americans that I retained the accent. Can you hear my British accent at all?"

"A little bit," Stan says. "When you say 'isolated among Americans.' And 'retained.'"

"Damn. I was always really proud of the American one, 'cause it was different, and a clue about my past. I tried really hard to keep it."

"I think it worked. I didn't know you were from the UK until we had our little interview in the exam room. You only sound British when you use big words."

They reach the diner, and Stan holds the door for Kyle, who looks at him like he's trying to decide if this is annoying or not. The hostess gives them a booth near the front window, and Stan is disappointed when Kyle sits across from him instead of next to him, though he had no reason to expect otherwise. A waitress comes to set down silverware and menus, and they both say yes when she asks if they want coffee.

"Coffee is my favorite drug," Kyle says. "It's the only one that's never let me down."

"I didn't start drinking it until I was in nursing school," Stan says.

"The girls must have loved you," Kyle says. He toys with his fork, then looks out the window.

"Girls?"

"Yeah, in nursing school. It's mostly women, right?"

"Oh – yeah." At least three of them wanted to adopt him. That was how they put it: they didn't want to fuck him, didn't want to date him, they wanted to adopt him. This reaction usually occurred around the time he told them he was an orphan.

"How about you?" Stan says. "What were you in school for?"

"Undecided, the first time around," Kyle says. "I was thinking about majoring in psychology, ha. The second time – well, guess."

"Guess?"

"Yeah, guess. It's got to do with, uh. Our mindset."

"Ours?" Stan is flattered.

"Amnesiacs."

"Oh, right. Um, Pre-Med?"

"No!" Kyle grins and opens his palms on the table, turning them toward Stan. "History. Get it?"

"Sure." Stan wants to slide his hands onto the table and hold Kyle's, and wonders if he could get away with that as a casual gesture. Last night, when he heard Kyle sobbing out terrified little moans, he flew to him without hesitating, a sickening feeling that he would be too late sitting heavy in his chest. As soon as he got his arms around Kyle he knew he'd have trouble letting go. Thankfully, Kyle clung so hard he left marks. He fell asleep against Stan's chest, and Stan wanted to stay awake all night, to protect him, but he woke up with his face in Kyle's hair at dawn. He wants to talk about it, but Kyle seems unimpressed, like he spends the night in the arms of strangers all the time. Considering what he told Stan about taking ecstasy, maybe it's not that unusual.

They order breakfast. Stan gets the Lumberjack Plate and Kyle asks for oatmeal, organic maple syrup, and half a grapefruit. The waitress brings a tiny white pitcher of syrup that almost definitely isn't organic, but Stan doesn't have the heart to tell Kyle, and he seems to enjoy it anyway, licking it from the corners of his lips.

"Do you think you'll ever go back to college?" Stan asks.

"I don't know," Kyle says. "I don't think about the future."

"Ever?"

"Nope. I can't. If I try to make plans for myself I end up crying and rocking in a corner, best case scenario. Worst case, someone has to sedate me to keep me from pulling chunks of my hair out."

"Dude."

"I know." Kyle stares at Stan, his spoon poised over his half-eaten grapefruit. "I should look at my phone," he says. "Spencer is probably having kittens."

"Is he going to have me arrested?" Stan asks as Kyle digs his phone from his pocket.

"I doubt it. What would the charges be?"

"I don't know. Cuddling his boyfriend."

Kyle turns pink, his smile coming slowly. He shakes his head and stares down at his phone, but the screen is still black, no buttons pressed.

"Last night," Kyle says.

"Yeah," Stan says. He pushes his the tip of his boot against Kyle's hipster sneaker. Kyle lets it rest there for a moment, then moves his foot away. He looks out the window, his fingers twitching on the tabletop.

"I'm sorry about that," Kyle says. "I must have scared the shit out of you."

"I didn't mind."

"Why not?" Kyle asks, a little sharply. He gives Stan an accusing look, like suddenly he's suspected of ulterior motives. Stan thinks of Kyle's nipples, then tries to think of anything else.

"I don't know," Stan says. "I just didn't mind. You're, like. My other half. I mean -!"

"Your other half?" Kyle raises his eyebrows.

"Yeah, 'cause of. The amnesia thing." Stan clears his throat and pushes the scrambled eggs around on his plate. Last night he was certain that Kyle felt the same way, that they were going to start talking realistically about Kyle's move to Akron. Maybe it was just the Coors Light.

"I have to confront this thing," Kyle says, touching his phone. "I mean. This is my life."

"The phone?"

"The people who worry about me! I know I've bitched about them to you, but that's just because you're an outsider."

"Oh – yeah. I know."

"I mean." Kyle winces, leaning forward and pressing his fingers to his temples. "I mean you have an outside perspective. Most of the people who meet me have been briefed by my mother beforehand. They don't exactly come into the experience with an open mind."

"Dude." Stan lifts his fork and points it at Kyle, eggs trembling on the spires. "I read your full medical chart before meeting you. I wasn't totally unbiased."

"That's true," Kyle says, mumbling. He looks down at his phone again. "Fuck. I can't even turn it on."

"Maybe that's a sign. Maybe you need a break from all of those people."

"So what do you suggest? I drop out of my life for a week and hang around your apartment, drinking Coors Light? This is crazy. I'm going to Hawaii in two days. That's probably what all of this about. I'm trying to sabotage our trip."

"Why would you try to sabotage a trip to Hawaii?"

"Dude, why do I do anything?" Kyle asks, increasingly agitated, breathing harder now. "I don't know! I don't know why the idea of getting on a plane and going to an island scares the shit out of me. I mean, goddamn, I lived on an island for the first eight years of my life that I can actually remember. Why does the idea of snorkling terrify me? I don't fucking know, it just does!"

"Okay, okay." Stan holds up his hands, then lets them drop down to the table, slowly, coming to rest over Kyle's wrists. Kyle's eyes soften, and he takes a deep breath, lets it out.

"Oh, fuck," he says, his voice small. "That's – why is that so good?"

"What?"

"That," Kyle says, looking down at table, where Stan's fingers are loosely gripping his wrists. "The – and last night. You – the way you, um. It's like _medicine_."

"What is?" Stan asks. He holds Kyle's wrists more firmly, hoping he's talking about his touch. Stan absorbs Kyle's like medicine, too, like a cure.

"Are you a human sedative?" Kyle asks.

"That kind of feels like an insult," Stan says, but he's smiling, because he thinks he knows what Kyle means. Kyle was shivering so hard last night when Stan pulled him into his lap. As soon as Stan's arms wrapped around him, the shivering stopped.

"It's not an insult," Kyle says. He turns his hands so that his palms are pressed against Stan's, their fingers locking together. "You know what I've always liked about holding hands?" he asks.

"What?"

"If – if you do it hard enough, you can feel the person's heart beating against your palm. You know?"

"Yeah," Stan says, though he doesn't. He's never held hands with anyone, unless he counts the nurses who used to lead him from exam room to exam room when he was a kid, and he wasn't interested in their heartbeats. He presses his palms against Kyle's, and Kyle presses back. Stan isn't sure if he can feel Kyle's heartbeat or just his own, which is shaking him, pounding. He looks up at Kyle, and Kyle drags his eyes up to Stan's, his lips parted.

"Are you gentlemen going to need anything else?" the waitress asks. They both startle, jumping apart. The waitress gives Stan a long look as if to say that, as a regular, she's disappointed in him.

"We're done, we're fine," Stan says, flustered. He takes the check, and Kyle picks up his phone again, staring down at it like it's a giant pill he's got to swallow. He presses the power button while Stan digs out his wallet.

"Fifteen text messages," Kyle says. "Five voice mails."

"There's a pond near here if you want to throw it in," Stan says.

"It's probably frozen," Kyle says, looking so sad about this that Stan reaches for him again, opening his hand on the table.

"You can hold my hand while you listen to your voice mails," Stan says. Kyle must think Stan is making fun of him, because he huffs and shakes his head, leaving Stan's hand empty.

"I'm not going to listen to them," he says. "I know what they'll say. Here's more proof that Kyle can't take care of himself and probably never will. I'm almost thirty, Stan."

The way Kyle says his name takes Stan aback; it's like he's speaking to him not as the agoraphobic amnesiac who's sitting across from him but as someone who knows him inside and out, always has.

"You're only twenty-five," Stan says. "That's not almost thirty."

"It might as well be. The years just blur together, and I don't accomplish anything. Spencer is the one thing I've done right. Do you know how hard it is for me to have any kind of relationship, let alone a long term one?"

"Yes," Stan says, growing desperate. Kyle raises his eyebrows.

"Oh, right," Kyle says. "You said you haven't had many long ones –"

"Any long ones," Stan says. "Ever." He's not ready to admit that he's only been kissed twice and has yet to even clumsily grab a boob, but he'll play those cards if he has to.

"Well, then you know how proud I am about this," Kyle says. "And if I can get through this Hawaii trip without eating my hand, that will be another huge step. I really – appreciate you letting me stay over, and how you – how you helped me last night, when I, um. And I like holding your hand, but, Jesus. What is that? It's not normal. It's not progress."

"Maybe we should try it again," Stan says, crushed. He has a shift in two hours, and his normal life feels like a prison cell he'll have to return to. Kyle will leave for Hawaii, or Chicago, or London. Wherever he goes, Stan will never be able to be in his apartment without seeing the ghost of Kyle, laughing and holding a Coors Light. He'll probably have to move.

Kyle listens to his messages, and Stan sits across from him, pretending to consult his own phone. He doesn't have any messages, never does, so he plays Tetris, keeping a very serious expression on his face while he does, as if this is important business.

"I need my medicine," Kyle says. He drops the phone to the table and it clatters there, making Stan think of movies where bullets are removed from limbs and dropped into shallow metal bowls.

"Your medicine?" Stan says. Kyle is breathing hard now, his hands over his face.

"Yeah. Lexapro, or Ambilify, or Zoloft? Vicodin? Do you have anything on you?"

"No," Stan says. "But I think we've got samples at the clinic. What's wrong? Did you finish listening to your messages?"

"I only got through two voice mails from my mother. I haven't even started on the texts."

"Do you need to hold my hand?" Stan asks, feeling like an idiot, but Kyle nods and grabs for him, letting out his breath when their fingers lock together.

"That's better," Kyle says, weakly, and when he smiles Stan lets go of the idea that they're ever going to be parted, because he's pretty sure he wouldn't survive it.

"You don't have to do what they say," Stan says. "You've got some issues, okay, but you're not an invalid. You can make your own choices."

"Maybe I just think I can," Kyle says. His fingers squeeze around Stan's. "Maybe I'm having a schizoid break and you're not even real."

"I'm real," Stan says, squeezing back.

"But how could you be?" Kyle asks, very softly. Stan gets up, still holding Kyle's hands, and slides into the booth beside him. From the corner of his eye he can see the waitress giving him hateful stares, but he ignores her, releasing one of Kyle's hands so he can slide an arm around his shoulders.

"I don't know," Stan says. "I don't what's happening to me, but something definitely is. And I think it's happening to you, too."

"I'm scared," Kyle says, whispering. He clutches at the front of Stan's jacket with his free hand. "Aren't you?"

"No," Stan says, and it's true. "And you can be scared if you want to, but you don't have to be. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

"I don't want to remember the past, and I don't want to think about the future," Kyle says. He scoots closer to Stan, pulling on his jacket until their foreheads knock together. "I just want to stay here with you, and I don't even know you. How can you want to deal with that? Are you crazier than I am? How can you not see how awful I am?"

"No one could tell me you're awful," Stan says. "I don't care how many degrees they have." He touches Kyle's face, and turns when someone clears her throat loudly. It's the waitress, standing over their table, scowling at them.

"Did you need anything else?" she asks coldly. Though she's old enough to be his mother, she's flirted with Stan in the past. Kyle shrinks against him, and Stan wants to carry him out of here.

"We're fine," Stan says, matching her tone. "We were just leaving."

She starts clearing their plates, and Stan takes Kyle's hand, pulling him from the booth. He takes a dollar back from the tip he left, hoping the waitress will see. Outside, he fusses with the scarf that's still looped around Kyle's neck, knotting it again.

"I don't know where to go," Kyle says. "Or what to do. I feel like I'm not even as panicked as I should be, and I'm pretty fucking panicked."

"You don't seem that panicked," Stan says. Kyle snorts and smiles.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. Look, let's go back to my place, and -"

"Kyle!"

They both look up to see Spencer running across the street, flailing like a cartoon character. He's got a jacket half pulled on, and his glasses are skewed. He's breathless when he reaches them, and he grabs Kyle's shoulders, almost knocking him over.

"Watch it!" Stan says. He steps behind Kyle to steady him, and Spencer scowls at him, pulling Kyle away from him.

"Are you alright?" Spencer asks Kyle, pushing Kyle's hair from his forehead and lowering his face to Kyle's as if he's checking his eyes for signs of hypnotism.

"I'm fine," Kyle says. He seems dazed, his eyes wide, and Stan begins to suspect hypnotism himself, because Kyle isn't shoving Spencer off of him. "How'd you know we were here?"

"You turned your phone on," Spencer says, panting. "It's got that tracking mechanism."

"It does?" Kyle says, frowning.

"Yes, precisely for incidents like this." Spencer looks at Stan. "What's he done to you? You're all pale."

"He's pale because he listened to his voice mail," Stan says. Kyle shakes his head.

"I need my medicine," he says.

"That's a little vague, darling. What do you need?" Spencer digs in his coat pocket, coming up with several pill bottles. "Anti-anxiety?"

"Vicodin?" Kyle says hopefully. Spencer rolls his eyes.

"That's on the no list and you know it." He bends down to give Kyle's forehead a dainty kiss. "I was so worried about you, my God. I don't think I slept at all."

"I slept," Kyle says. He rubs at the spot where Spencer kissed him. Spencer's mouth quirks.

"Yeah? Is that all you did?" He gives Stan a hateful look.

"Of course," Kyle says, frowning. "What did you think this was? He's straight, Spence." Kyle gives Stan a timid glance to check the accuracy of this statement. Stan's mouth is hanging open.

"That's right," Stan says. It still feels true, though he does want Kyle in his arms, and wouldn't object to sucking his cock if he asked. Spencer huffs.

"Well, of course," he says. "That doesn't mean – oh, never mind. You're safe, thank God." He kisses Kyle again, holding his face in his hands this time. Stan's hands curl into fists.

"We had a good talk," Stan says. He feels like an idiot, and he looks at Kyle, waiting to be backed up. Kyle just looks dazed. He takes a pill bottle from Spencer's hand and pops the top off.

"Oh, really?" Spencer says. "What amazing breakthroughs did you achieve? I presume Kyle has been totally cured by this time spent with you? His breath certainly reeks of bad beer. And instant oatmeal."

"Don't be a dick, Spence," Kyle says. He swallows two pills dry. "It was good. It was surreal, but good."

"Kyle," Stan says, desperately, just so he'll look at him. Kyle does, shyly. Spencer's giant hand is on Kyle's shoulder. His fingers are bony and pale; Stan thinks of the hand of death.

"You've had your fun," Spencer says, bracing his skeletal hand against Stan's chest when he tries to move toward Kyle. "Good job taking advantage of a mentally unstable boy. I hope you enjoyed it."

"I'm not a boy," Kyle says, glowering at him. Spencer rolls his eyes.

"Forgive me if I think of you that way," he says. "It's only because I adore you."

"I adore him, too," Stan blurts, because he's losing ground fast here. Kyle boggles at him. Spencer does, too, his mouth hanging open.

"Excuse me?" Spencer looks at Kyle. "I thought you said he was straight?"

"He – is?" Kyle says. Surreptitiously, he pops another pill into his mouth.

"Stop that," Stan says, grabbing the pill bottle. He reads the label: Ambilify. "You shouldn't be taking these after a night of drinking." He's shaking, and doesn't know how to proceed. The only plan that comes to him is decking Spencer, putting Kyle over his shoulder and carrying him back to the car.

"A night of drinking?" Spencer says. "Really? As a medical professional, that was your prescription for him? Give me that!" He grabs the Ambilify back and shoves it into his pocket. "I think we're done with this," he says, grabbing Kyle's elbow.

"Wait," Stan says. "Please – Kyle. I know you're scared, but –"

"You don't know anything about him!" Spencer says, shouting. Kyle is looking at Stan like a terrified puppy who's been cornered by two tail-pulling toddlers.

"I do," Stan says. "I do know about him." He knows what Kyle told him, but he feels like he knows other things, too. He just can't get them to roll off his tongue. Kyle is watching him, waiting, looking hopeful. Stan just makes a vague croaking sound.

"You're a lunatic," Spencer says, pointing his finger at Stan. "This isn't the first time he's attempted to bond with a fellow mental patient. It's not uncommon." He straightens his shoulders as he says so, proud of himself for knowing this. Stan ignores him, keeping his eyes locked on Kyle's.

"I do know him," Stan says again, pathetically.

"I'll be in touch with the nursing board about this," Spencer says. "You can be sure of that." He starts to drag Kyle away, and for a gut wrenching moment it seems like Kyle will go willingly, but then he shakes free of Spencer's grip.

"Wait," Kyle says, softly. "Hang on. Shit." He moans and puts his hands over his face. "I can't _think_."

"Yes, Kyle, I think we've firmly established that," Spencer says. "Now let's go someplace where you can let those drugs be absorbed properly, and then we can talk about this when you're able to think straight again."

"Those pills are the reason he can't think!" Stan says. "He was eating them like candy."

"It's not the pills!" Kyle says, the volume of his voice alarming both Stan and Spencer, who recoils. Kyle is staring at Stan, his eyes narrowed. "It's you! Goddammit, what the fuck _are_ you?"

Stan is too wounded to respond for a moment, but Kyle seems to be waiting for an answer, his eyes getting wet.

"I don't know who I am," Stan says. "You know that."

"Very poetic," Spencer says, affecting a yawn. Kyle is still staring at Stan, tears escaping down his cheeks. Stan wants to walk to him, wipe his cheeks dry, pull him against his chest. Spencer digs his phone from his pocket and consults it.

"Look," he says, showing it to Kyle. "There's a five o'clock flight to London this evening, British Airways, I could –"

"I'm not going to London," Kyle says. He wipes his face with Stan's scarf. "We're going back to Chicago, and in two days we have a flight to Hawaii. That's the only flight I'm taking."

"Oh, Kyle, really? You still think we should take this trip? I really think, considering –"

"We're going to Hawaii," Kyle says. He looks at Stan. "I'm not – I'm not crazy. I just need to get back to my normal life."

"Normal?" Stan says. He knows that was the wrong thing to say when Kyle's shoulders drop.

"It's the best I'm going to do," he says.

"Come, darling," Spencer says, sliding his arms around Kyle's shoulders. "I'll take you home, draw you a hot bath, make you some tea."

"He doesn't like the tea kettle," Stan says, defeated. "You should get rid of it."

"Stay the fuck out of it, maybe?" Spencer says, leading Kyle away. Kyle looks back over his shoulder at Stan, then turns around and lets Spencer guide him across the street.

Stan stays on the sidewalk outside the diner, watching them walk away until they've turned a corner. Kyle doesn't look back again. Stan turns around, so ripped apart that he's surprised he doesn't see his organs dangling when he looks down at his chest. The waitress is watching him through the diner's window, a pot of coffee in her hand. She shakes her head slowly, as if to tell him he should have known that would happen.


	6. Chapter 6

Two days later, Kyle is in line for security at O'Hare, breathing into an inhaler. Spencer is watching him like he's waiting for him to call the whole thing off, get the tickets to Hawaii changed to London and curl up at his mother's feet with an IV of anti-anxiety drugs plugged into his arm. Right now, facing the noise of the crowd and the prospect of takeoff – and, worse, of landing – that actually sounds wonderful. Kyle wants morphine. He wants someone to take a hammer to his head, wants to wake up when this is all over.

"It's not too late for you to change your mind," Spencer says as they approach the security station, people ahead of them taking off their shoes.

"No," Kyle says, pulling the inhaler from his lips. "I'm fine. I just need to get on the plane. And then the plane needs to take off. And then it needs to land without crashing. Then I'll be fine."

"I don't understand why you wouldn't let me give you a Valium," Spencer says.

"Because I'm tired of missing my life, being doped up all the time!" He's actually really wishing he had taken that Valium and maybe washed it down with a fifth of bourbon. "This is a trip for a normal person. I'm going to behave like a normal person the whole time."

"Kyle, for God's sake," Spencer says, muttering. He slides off his loafers and places them in a security tray. "Lots of normal people are afraid of flying."

"Yeah, and they deal with it instead of drugging themselves into unconsciousness."

It's not the flight itself that's making him panic. He's been a nonfunctional mess for the past two days, and he's been able to blame his stress on the upcoming trip, but it's not the trip that's rattled him. He can't stop thinking about Stan, alone in that little apartment, drinking his Coors Light in front of the TV. He can't stop wanting to be there with him. Stan is probably crazy, too, but Kyle wouldn't mind joining him in his insanity if it meant he got to hide in that apartment all day, tidying and cooking, waiting for Stan to get home from work. He wouldn't even need sex, if Stan really is straight. The cuddling alone would sustain him, and Stan seemed more than willing to offer it generously.

"Take your shoes off, Kyle," Spencer says. This shouldn't make Kyle want to hit him in the face, but it does, kind of like everything Spencer has said for the past two days.

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child," Kyle says.

"I'm not. Hurry, we're holding up the line."

Kyle pulls his sneakers off, wincing at the thought of his socks touching this filthy floor. He stands on his tip-toes, self conscious about the smell of his feet.

"You know, this trip was your idea," Spencer says as they walk toward the scanners, Kyle sweating and feeling like he'll be caught for something, though he's got no evil plans.

"Yeah, and?"

"And you're acting like I'm personally escorting you to a death camp."

"Don't joke about that!"

"It's not a joke, that's just how you're acting."

"It's just – flying, whatever. Go!" Kyle pushes Spencer toward the scanner. "Now you're the one holding up the line."

Spencer sighs and walks through the scanning device. Kyle braces himself before he does the same. They can see through your clothes now, and he hates nothing more than the thought of being naked in public. He walks through as quickly as he can without looking guilty. There are no alarms sounding as he heads toward the other end of the conveyor belt that will spit out his shoes, but his heart is racing anyway, every muscle in his body braced for attack. He keeps feeling like he forgot to pack something that he'll die without on the island, and he keeps deciding that it's Stan. _That nurse_, as Spencer calls him. Kyle stopped Spencer from calling the nursing board – if there even is such a thing – to try to get Stan in trouble. Spencer was adamant, but Kyle begged. There was a blow job involved. He kind of can't believe Stan hasn't called him.

"Well, that's one hurdle down," Spencer says when they're on the other side of the security station. "Are you going to put your shoes back on, or just carry them around?"

"Give me a second!"

They're both annoyed with each other. Spencer claims to believe that Kyle didn't actually let Stan fuck him, but Kyle can see that he's doubtful. It's not like Kyle hasn't lied to him before, but he's never cheated, and he's insulted by Spencer's lack of faith in him, despite the fact that, if Stan had reached into Kyle's pants while they were cuddling, Kyle would have sucked at his neck and begged to be fucked. He has a thing for straight guys. It's self-destructive, and he should have treated his attraction to Stan as the warning sign that it was, but he slept with his face buried in Stan's shirt instead, because that's what Kyle does: destructs.

The terminal is crowded, and the airport lounge makes Kyle want to find a corner, pull his sweater over his head and hide there until paramedics rescue him. He has a book called _An Agoraphobic's Guide to Air Travel_, a gift from Spencer. It's not especially helpful; the recommended coping techniques include spelling words backward and counting to one thousand.

"Looks like it's going to be a full flight," Spencer says. "Are you sure you don't want to upgrade to first class? Your mother offered to pay for it."

"I don't want her paying for it," Kyle says, though of course she actually pays for everything. Kyle has never held a real job – the mere concept that he could is laughable to everyone who's ever treated him – and he tries to live off his disability payments without needing any additional allowance from his parents, but the payments only reach him through the efforts of his mother, who still claims him as a dependent in the UK. It's the most Kyle can hope for from any relationship: to be claimed as a dependent. Someday, maybe Spencer will have that torch passed to him. The thought makes Kyle's lungs constrict.

"I –" He tries to say, _I can't breathe_, but can't even do that much. Spencer gets him seated and gives him his inhaler. It doesn't feel like it's working, and Kyle's legs are very suddenly itchy, which is a symptom of what?

"Try to calm down," Spencer says. "Or, here. Take something." He reaches into the pocket of his baggy sweater coat, pill bottles rattling between his fingers. Kyle liked Spencer's hands when they first met; they're like a pianist's. Now he wants other hands on him, the ones that gently rolled up his sleeve for his blood pressure test and wiped the tears from his cheeks after his dream.

"Have you noticed that I haven't had the dream in two days?" Kyle says when he can talk again. Spencer is still sorting through the pill bottles, and he looks up with a frown.

"Two days?" Spencer says. He frowns. "You've gone longer than that. I have extensive notes on this, Kyle – I've documented a two week period. You're just – God, never mind."

"Just what? I'm just what?"

"Fixating on your little adventure!" Spencer says, hissing his words. "Like I knew you would. You haven't had the dream in two days – are you trying to credit the nurse?"

"No," Kyle says. "Fuck you. Why can't you just be happy for me?"

"Because you're dragging me on a trip to Hawaii that you don't want to take?" Spencer says. He actually seems sad for a moment, which Kyle had forgotten was possible. "Because you're fixated on a number of unhealthy symbols? This fucking trip being one of them. The nurse being the other."

"His name was Stan."

"God, why bother talking about him in the past tense? He's omnipresent, after all."

"He is not!" In fact, there's a guy shuffling around near the check-in desk who looks a lot like Stan. It's uncanny, to the point that Kyle wonders if he's hallucinating. He decides that he must be when the man walks over toward them, so Stan-like that he actually is Stan, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Spencer asks, bellowing. Kyle has never seen Spencer so completely unwound, and the Stan who is looking down at them sadly must be the real one, because Spencer is seeing him, too.

"I don't really know," Stan says.

"How did you get past security?" Spencer stands like he's ready for a fight. Kyle still kind of wants to see that happen, but Stan hasn't looked at Spencer yet. His eyes are locked on Kyle's.

"I bought a ticket to Des Moines," Stan says. He digs it out of his coat pocket, and doesn't even flinch when Spencer snatches it out of his hand to examine it. "I've been here since nine in the morning. I wasn't sure what time your flight was leaving."

"It leaves at two thirty," Kyle says, dazed. Spencer makes a sound like he's literally choking on his disbelief.

"Why do you not sound surprised to see him?" Spencer asks. He throws Stan's plane ticket into Kyle's lap, but Kyle doesn't look at it, can't seem to break eye contact with Stan. "Did you two plan this?"

"No," Stan says. "Kyle had nothing to do with this. I'm just being a freak, I'm sorry. I felt like – maybe – you'd be nervous about flying, like, you needed me?" He groans and puts his hands over his face, palms pressing into his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm out of my mind, I don't even know what I'm doing."

"Stan," Kyle says, softly, and Stan must hear the encouragement in it, because he looks hopeful when he takes his hands away from his face.

"I'm calling the police," Spencer says, digging out his cell phone. "This is stalking. Oh, God, and you have my apartment address on those goddamn forms!"

"Please don't call the police," Stan says. "I'll – I'll leave you alone." He looks at Kyle to make sure this is what he wants, and he must know that it's not what Kyle wants at all, because he's holding his arms out for him even before Kyle's ass leaves his seat.

"Don't leave me alone," Kyle says, grabbing hold of Stan. He squeezes himself to Stan's chest as Stan's arms close around him. "Please, I do need you, I do."

"This is insanity!" Spencer says, shouting now. Everyone in the lounge is staring at the three of them as if they're putting on a play to entertain everyone while they wait for their flight to board.

"Kyle," Stan says, whispering. "I know – I know this is nuts –"

"Doesn't matter, it doesn't matter," Kyle says, his arms tightening around Stan. He smells so good, like the place that Kyle found that night after his dream, where everything was okay in a way it had never been before. In Stan's arms, he feels rescued. It doesn't make sense, but Kyle doesn't need it to.

"Let go of him," Spencer says. "He doesn't know what he's doing. You're – you're taking advantage of a very disturbed person –"

"If that's true, you did the same thing," Kyle says, lifting his face from Stan's shoulder to glower at Spencer. "You think I'm an invalid who can't make decisions for himself? Then I guess every time we fucked you were raping me?"

Stan's arms tighten around him when he says this, and several people in the lounge gasp audibly. Normally this would be Kyle's worst nightmare, the attention of all these strangers focused on him, judgment cast on him like a laser beam, but he doesn't give a fuck as long as he can keep holding on to Stan.

"That's absurd," Spencer says. The color has drained from his face, and his eyes are widening as he begins to accept that he's actually going to lose Kyle to the nurse. Kyle feels sorry for him, even if he is a condescending asshole. Spencer really did want to help him. He just wanted course credit for it, too.

"I know it's absurd," Kyle says. He eases out of Stan's grip and wants to retreat back into it immediately, but just having Stan close by gives him the strength to walk to Spencer and pat his chest. "But you know this is over, too. Me and you. This stupid Hawaii thing – I'm sorry. This is my fault, my failure. You don't have to feel bad about it." Kyle actually feels victorious, finally able to grasp the concept of a breakthrough, but he wants to cushion the blow a little. Spencer doesn't deserve to see Stan carry Kyle away in his much more substantial arms, neither of them looking back.

"Kyle," Spencer says, deflating now. The lounge has gone silent, everyone waiting to see what will happen. "He's – what is this? He's not even gay."

"So? This is not about sex, Spence." Kyle actually wants it to be, at least in part, but maybe that's just his illness. Spencer rolls his eyes and picks up their bags.

"Come on," he says, grabbing Kyle's arm. "We're not having this conversation here. We've got an audience."

"I don't care," Kyle says. He takes Spencer's hand and uncurls his fingers, one at a time, as politely as possible. "And I don't need to have another big conversation about it. I've got no explanation for this, and that doesn't bother me. You and Mom are the ones who always wanted to explain me, make charts and give presentations about every shitty thing I feel. I've stopped caring why, I just want something to make me feel _better_. Not numb, better. He makes me feel better."

"You're in love with him!" Spencer says, throwing up his hands. "Or infatuated, I should say." Spencer sniffs and points his finger at Stan. "I hope you're okay with that. A fragile gay boy is attaching himself to you. Every straight man's fantasy, right?"

"Quit picking on him," Stan says, walking closer. "And keep your fucking voice down."

"He's not straight," Spencer says to Kyle. He's sweating now, twitching, as if he's going to have some sort of episode himself, for a change of pace. "Or, if he is, he just wants to murder you."

"I've already spent the night with him once," Kyle says, rapidly losing interest in protecting Spencer's feelings. "And he didn't murder me. I didn't want to tell you this, I didn't want you to be _jealous_, but I had my nightmare and he calmed me down."

"With his dick?"

"No, and not with pills and fucking analysis, either! He held me, okay?" Kyle checks over his shoulder to see that people are still staring, and he drops the volume of his voice. "He held me all night long."

"Kyle." Spencer runs his hands over his face. "You don't like to be touched. Who are you? Who am I talking to right now? Are you having a dissociative break?"

"I'm not having any kind of break! I feel like someone finally put me back together!"

"Really? As someone who's greatest fear is remembering who he is, I'm surprised you're finding that such a comfort."

"Maybe I'm not afraid anymore," Kyle says. His hands twitch at his sides. He is afraid, doesn't want to know what happened to him, but he's no longer afraid to live a lucid life, as long as Stan is always close at hand.

"I don't have to stand here and watch you destroy yourself," Spencer says. He throws Kyle's carry on bag down at his feet. "This is no different than your _exploits_ in college, the ones you regret so much. Maybe getting fucked by a psychotic stranger will make you feel more alive for a little while, but you're going to come crawling home with mascara under your eyes, begging for help."

"I've never worn mascara," Kyle says, scowling. He doesn't want Stan to get the impression that was literal. Stan picks up Kyle's bag and puts it over his shoulder.

"Your mother is going to be devastated!" Spencer shouts. He starts to storm away, hesitates for a moment, then turns back. "I suppose you'll take him to Hawaii now? Ha! I'd love to see that!" He leaves before Kyle can answer, pushing out into the crowd of travelers, stomping in a rather effeminate way. Kyle turns to Stan, almost afraid to know what he thought about all of that. Stan smiles. There's nervousness in it, but nothing unkind.

"Do you want to go to Hawaii?" Kyle asks, hoping he'll say no. Stan shakes his head.

"I've got work tomorrow," he says. "They're already pissed at me for taking today off. But, I, just. Couldn't let you go there, not with him."

"So, um," Kyle says. Stan is still holding his bag. "He's gone."

"Good fucking riddance," Stan says. "That guy's voice was like a knife to the ear. Was that a fake British accent?"

"Sort of. Um, he's American, but he went to school in the UK."

They're quiet for a moment, Stan looking down at Kyle's shoes and Kyle waiting to hear what the plan is, unwilling to make one himself.

"So," Stan says. "You want to get out of here?"

"Yes, but where would we go?"

"Back to Akron," Stan says. He seems wounded by the question. "To my apartment. I mean, unless you want to go someplace else?"

"No." Kyle grins. "That's where I want to go."

They're quiet as they walk back through the airport, past a line for security that has grown tremendous. As they're approaching the luggage carousels, Kyle's hand brushes Stan's, and Stan takes hold of it. Kyle is breathing shallowly, scared. It doesn't feel like his usual terror, the kind of thing that makes him want to hide under a bed. He thinks it might be something akin to the fear that normal people experience when they want something to go well, when they would do anything to stay where they are and are afraid that they might ruin things.

"Are you okay?" Stan asks.

"Yeah," Kyle says. "Just. This is mad, right?"

"Mad, yeah," Stan says, grinning at the expression. "I just couldn't stop thinking about you."

"What's going to happen now?" Kyle asks as they walk through the airport's sliding glass doors, past people waiting for taxis. "When we get back to the apartment?"

"You want to talk about the future?" Stan says. He sounds encouraged. Kyle wilts, squeezing Stan's hand more tightly.

"On second thought, no," he says. "Let's just play it by ear."

"Sounds good to me."

"One thing, though, Stan."

"Yeah?"

"You're holding my hand."

Stan looks down at their entwined fingers, frowning. "I thought you liked it?"

"I do, God, but do _you_? I mean, it's pretty gay."

"Oh." Stan flushes, but he's still holding Kyle's hand as they wind through the cars in the parking lot, slushy snow soaking Kyle's sneakers. "Well, um. About that."

"Yes?" Kyle is pulled up onto his tiptoes by hope as Stan unlocks the passenger side door. Stan clears his throat uncomfortably and opens the door for him.

"This is kind of a long and convoluted story," Stan says.

"Well, we've got a long car trip ahead of us," Kyle says. He never thought he'd be thrilled by the prospect; travel by car sometimes makes him more anxious than flying, just for the lack of available bathrooms. He's cozy as soon as he settles down into the passenger seat in Stan's car, smiling up at him, waiting to hear this convoluted explanation for his willingness to hold Kyle's hand.

"Buckle up," Stan says. Kyle does, then looks up at Stan again. Stan smiles, and leans down like he's thinking about kissing Kyle on the forehead. "I'll tell you," Stan says. "But it's embarrassing."

"As someone who's sobbed while you held him, I think I can relate," Kyle says.

"Fair enough," Stan says. He closes the door and walks around to the passenger side. Being inside the car while Stan is outside of it gives Kyle a stab of panic, like they've returned to two separate worlds, but Stan is quickly beside him, buckling himself in. When he turns on the car, more show tunes blare from the speakers. Stan curses and hurries to turn it off.

"You can play your music if you want," Kyle says. "I'm not a snob." He is, actually, but for Stan he'd listen to Toby Keith at full blast and be charmed.

"That music's not really conducive to conversation," Stan says, laughing self-consciously.

"So," Kyle says as they pull out of the lot. Stan is obviously a confident driver, speeding through the parking lot and taking turns fast. If it were Spencer, Kyle would be hysterical, asking him if he was crazy, but Stan is so calm, the wheel sliding easily under his palms. "You were going to tell me something?" Kyle says.

"Yeah," Stan says, slowly. "It's more of a question, really."

"Okay."

"Um." Stan shifts in his seat, flushing. "Okay, well. You're gay."

"I am."

"So, and maybe you don't know, but. Do some straight guys, like. Watch gay porn?"

Kyle laughs, then feels badly. Stan seems stressed, both hands tight on the wheel now.

"Well, I guess they might be curious about it," Kyle says. "Though personally I was never curious about lesbian porn. But it might take some guys longer, um. To figure out what they want."

"What if they pretty much only watch gay porn and always have?" Stan asks. He looks over at Kyle, obviously distressed by this confession. Kyle touches Stan's leg, then realizes that might not be the wisest thing to do while talking someone through their anxiety about their sexuality. He takes his hand away, but Stan pulls it back.

"I like that, too," Stan says, his voice tight. "When you, like. Touch me. _Shit_."

"Stan, you know –" Kyle has never been in this situation before, though he has been fucked by guys who still called themselves straight afterward. "This might sound redundant or something, coming from me, but – it's okay if you're gay, dude." He's been working _dude_ into his vocabulary without even meaning to. Spencer gave him a look of hellfire for it just this morning.

"I know it's okay to be gay," Stan says, groaning when he hears himself. "Or, sort of. The group home I grew up in, um. It was run by this Catholic organization, and, like. I knew a lot of nuns and priests."

"Oh?" If there's anything that gets Kyle's self-destructive libido going more than nominally straight guys, it's the ones who have this particular reasoning behind their denial.

"When I was a kid, I said at confession that I wanted to sleep in the same bed with another boy," Stan says, mumbling, his face growing red. "And the priest said I would never have a family if I gave in to those urges. And I really wanted a fucking family. I mean, I still do."

"Gay people can have families."

"I know," Stan says, but he doesn't really sound convinced.

"The boy you wanted to sleep in the bed with - it was someone from the orphanage?"

"No, um. He wasn't real. He was just this idea I had. Like, I would wake up and think that there should be another boy in bed with me. Not for sex or anything, just, like - I don't know. I just wanted him there. Close."

"I remember that feeling," Kyle says. Stan looks over at him, frowning.

"You do?"

"Yeah, I thought every kid had that. My therapist told me it was an abstract desire for intimacy combined with burgeoning sexual desire. And that I was probably gay."

"Oh. And you were just – okay with that? The gay part?"

"Well, I already knew. You know that reoccurring dream I have? It's basically about drowning in a frozen lake. Every time I have the dream, I think I have to walk across the lake to get to something on the other side, to this person who will save me and take me home – to my _real_ home. In the dream, and afterward, too, I'm always sure it's a guy waiting for me. Of course, it's not actual certainty, I just want it to be a guy. That's how I knew – when I was a kid, I wanted it to be another boy. And I wanted him to be there when I woke up, in bed with me, real."

Stan is blushing, and Kyle wonders if he should shut up. He's accustomed to everyone around him wanting to hear anecdotes about his analysis, and he wants to tell Stan everything, but he's going to have to stagger it or risk scaring the shit out of him.

"Anyway," Kyle says. He adjusts the heat, starting to shiver, his sneakers still soggy. "You're still Catholic?"

"Yeah," Stan says. "But I hardly ever go to church unless I'm really depressed, and I don't agree with the church about everything. I just, I grew up believing that even if I never found out who I was, and even if no one else could ever tell me, God knows who I am. He was there with me before and He's there now." Stan clears his throat, dropping one hand from the steering wheel and drumming his fingers against his thigh. "So, uh. Did your parents raise you with religion?"

"Oh." Kyle scoffs wetly. "Them? No. They're atheists. I wanted to convert to Judaism when I was thirteen, because I'm circumcised, and I thought that meant something, you know, about my past, but they said like ninety percent of the boys in America are circumcised and accused me of just wanting them to throw me a big party."

"A big party?"

"A bar mitzvah. I don't know, I still think about it sometimes. Is that true about guys in America being, um? I mean, I researched it and it seems to be true –"

"I'm not," Stan says. "Um, not circumcised." He blushes harder.

"Ah – okay." Kyle swallows, his hands shaking. Sex has always seemed like either a chore or a cliff dive before now. He's never wanted it like this, and he's pretty sure he's not going to get it. It's the reason the straight-Catholic thing is hot: guys like Stan are unattainable, any efforts on Kyle's behalf doomed to failure. "Thanks for, um. Telling me."

"Is Spencer gonna be okay?" Stan asks, apparently ready to change the subject.

"Spencer is just humiliated," Kyle says. "I feel kinda bad. But I always had to tell myself he was good for me. I think it made me resent him. That, and the fact that he openly referred to me as an invalid boy."

"How'd you meet him, anyway?" Stan says, and his distasteful expression makes Kyle laugh.

"What, you can't guess?"

"Um. At an art gallery?"

Kyle laughs harder. "No, my mother sent him to check up on me after I moved to America. He was her student when he was in the UK for college. Oh, God, my mother." Kyle squirms in his seat, adjusting his safety belt. "She'll send people after me, the way they do with people who need rescuing from cults."

"More guys like Spencer?" Stan scoffs. "I could take 'em."

"She might actually go for a different tack this time around. Armed thugs or something."

"You have amnesty," Stan says. "Or something. Right? As someone who was originally an American citizen? Probably, anyway? The British can't recapture you."

"Oh, God, what am I doing?" Kyle asks, pushing his hands into his hair. "This is so mad. But I don't feel afraid. That in itself is a fucking miracle. Or a sign of deeper psychosis than ever before."

"You don't seem psychotic to me," Stan says with a shrug.

"Thanks."

"A little neurotic, maybe."

"The only exception I can take to that is the fact that you quantified it with 'a little.' I'm extremely neurotic. I've accepted that about myself. Are you – ready to accept that? I mean, what are we doing, Stan? Am I going to live with you?"

"Well, yeah," Stan says, frowning. "I mean, for awhile. For as long as you want."

"Yes, but – Stan!"

"What? I know, dude, but it feels right. It felt right, when you were there with me that night."

"It did," Kyle says. He reaches over to touch Stan's thigh, and Stan puts his hand over Kyle's. "So, do you still go to confession?" He feels guilty for fetishizing this, but he is genuinely curious, too. He wants to know everything about Stan, to exchange the diaries they kept in childhood, though he would bet Stan wasn't forced to keep a diary.

"If I go to church, I usually confess," Stan says. "But I hardly ever go."

"Could I go with you? Just as a guest? I was never allowed to go to any sort of religious ceremony. My mother said that sort of fear mongering was the last thing I needed."

"Yeah, you could come," Stan says, brightening. He laughs. "The last time I went to church I talked about watching gay porn in confession. Now I'll be, uh." He shifts in his seat, blushing. "With you. They'll probably think, you know. That we're. That you're _with_ me."

"Will that be okay? I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"Nah, it'll be good. The last priest I confessed to actually seemed pretty sympathetic. I think he might be gay, this one guy."

"Is he hot?" Kyle asks, jealously. Stan laughs.

"No way, dude. He's like fifty."

Kyle withholds a remark about having been fucked by men older than fifty. That's a conversation he can save for later.

"He probably wanted to bone you," Kyle says. "That priest." He shakes his head after he's said this, winces. "No – sorry. I've been around iconoclasts my whole life – well, for the part I can remember. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I think I am, by default."

"It's okay," Stan says. "I've got a sense of humor about it and everything. I know priests still have, like, temptation."

"Did you have any bad experiences?" Kyle asks. "Um, with that? As a kid?"

"No," Stan says, laughing. "Unless that's the thing I can't remember. But I didn't have any, like. Signs, of that. When they found me."

"Me either," Kyle says. "But when I was a teenager, that was my worst fear, that someday I'd remember that I was somebody's sex slave."

"I used to be afraid about that, too," Stan says. "I think that's why I, um. Was pretty repressed. Sex-wise."

"That's funny, because I think that's the reason I lost my virginity at thirteen."

"Jesus, Kyle!"

"Yeah, it was bad. I mean, I was high, I don't remember it, and he was thirteen, too, if that helps? But I wanted to, like, ruin myself on my own terms, since I assumed that I'd been ruined by someone else in the years I can't remember. Then, hey, punchline: I would chicken out at the last second and get blasted enough to not remember the ruining I decided to do, either."

"Where were your parents?" Stan asks, squeezing Kyle's hand. He looks so broken up that Kyle wishes he'd saved that story for later, too.

"When I was losing my virginity? Upstairs, at a party. This boy was the son of a therapist, too, and fucked up almost on the level of me, without the glamorous backstory. He was pretty sweet, actually, and this wouldn't even be some big regret if our parents hadn't found out and essentially ended our friendship for us."

Stan's face is bright red, and Kyle needs to change the subject. He looks out the window at the other passing cars, wondering about the problems of the passengers, the drivers, things that no one who took one look at them could know. He's tired of seeing people this way, as collection of secret troubles, all in need of saving.

"So, when that priest told you what he told you, about not being able to have a family," Kyle says when Stan has been quiet for awhile. "Was that after a confession?"

"Um, yeah." Stan swallows heavily, and Kyle is surprised to hear what sounds like the beginning of tears in his voice. Panic jump-starts his heart. Maybe Stan is regretting everything now that he knows what Kyle is: _slut, slag, crazy ginger fag_. They used to chant it at him in school.

"Are you okay?" Kyle asks, afraid to look at him.

"Yeah," Stan says. He sniffles again, and Kyle thinks of the partially used tissues in the pockets of his sweater, wondering if he should offer one. "And I want you to tell me everything, I just. I hate hearing about how lonely you were."

Kyle has never heard his soulless experiments with sex described as a symptom of his loneliness before. He was most often accused of wanting attention, practicing self-harm or just spoiled recklessness, and he'd come to accept those as the reasons for his behavior himself.

"You were lonely, too," Kyle says. His voice is tight, but he finds that he doesn't care. He could cry in front of Stan. He has before, that night when he had the dream, and he feels like he's done so before that, too, though he can't remember when or why.

"I tried to have a good attitude about it," Stan says. "I thought, 'someday, someone will come along.' I wanted them to recognize me. I didn't want to have to win them over or convince them I was good, I wanted them to _know_. The way you know."

"You don't actually think we might have known each other?" Kyle has been afraid to consider the possibility, if it could even be called that. He doesn't want to associate any part of the mystery of his past trauma with Stan, who is the first person who's ever made Kyle feel like he can leave whatever happened to him behind forever. Stan shakes his head.

"I don't think so," he says. "I wanted it to be literal, maybe, but this is different."

"Yeah? So why do I feel like I know you?"

"Because –" Stan stops himself, groans. "Never mind. I've been listening to too many musicals."

"No, tell me!"

"Because we belong together," Stan says. He gives Kyle a nervous glance. "Sorry. I know that's dumb."

"Yeah, it's so dumb that I'm driving back to Akron to live with you after knowing of your existence for three days," Kyle says. He wants to kiss Stan's cheek, which looks so hot, bright red. "I don't think I've ever met a real romantic. Do you get it from the musicals?"

"I don't know, maybe. The nuns liked them. They gave me cassette tapes, and, uh. I sort of didn't know that other music existed until I was, like. Fifteen."

"What's your favorite?" Kyle asks.

"Oh, God." Stan winces. "You'll laugh."

"I will not!"

"Well, this is really predictable, I guess," Stan says. "It's _Annie_. As in little orphan." He sneaks a look at Kyle to see if he's laughing. Maybe he should be; Spencer would say this was so trite. It's the kind of thing they would hear stories about at a party – _my ex who loved little orphan Annie_. They would laugh, wine sloshing over the sides of their glasses.

"That's really sweet," Kyle says, because he can't say, _I'm so in love with you_, even if it's obvious.

"What's yours?" Stan asks.

"Equally predictable," Kyle says. He raises his eyebrows. "_Les Miserables_."

They both laugh, and Stan lets Kyle turn the stereo on, a love song from _Phantom of the Opera_ bursting from the speakers. Stan turns the volume down, and they talk over the entire musical, which turns out to be perfectly conducive to conversation. Kyle tells Stan about his friend Christophe, who was the only kid Kyle ever met who knew all the lyrics to every song in _Les Mis_.

"He's the weirdest guy I know, but he's so great," Kyle says. "He came to my dad for treatment before I was officially adopted, and we would be there at the institute together, staring into space and talking about the meaninglessness of life while the other kids played with Legos. Well, he talked about the meaninglessness of life. I mostly just cried."

"Did you ever, like – date him?" Stan asks.

"No," Kyle says, laughing hard at the idea. "I don't think he's gay. He says that everybody is a little gay, but he never dates anybody. He's pretty intense."

"And he's the one who told you to come see me?"

"Yeah," Kyle says. "I got this cryptic message from him a couple of months back. He's still in the UK, so we don't talk that often anymore. He texted me with Dr. Harper's name and address and told me that I had to drop everything and go see this guy. He said it was apocalyptically important, but he says that about everything, so I ignored it at first. He kept insisting, and I was getting so bad as that trip to Hawaii got closer, I figured I might as well give a new doctor a shot."

"Have you told him how successful his recommendation was?" Stan asks, grinning.

"No – I want to, but he's not answering his phone. Which isn't that unusual for him, but I really wish he'd return my calls so I could ask him how he heard about you."

"I guess I'm just famous in England."

"Among angry French nationals, anyway."

After three hours of driving, the _West Side Story_ soundtrack playing low on the stereo, Kyle falls asleep. He's never been able to sleep during a car ride, but Stan's car is especially cozy, even the quality of the heat that's blasting from the dash better than any Kyle has ever encountered. When he wakes up the sky has darkened behind the cloud cover, and he pretends to go on sleeping, because Stan is singing "Somewhere" under his breath and it's fucking adorable. Kyle has never met anyone who listens to the soundtracks of musicals unironically. He falls asleep again, and dreams that he's singing on a rooftop, hearing Stan's voice from far away. They're singing to each other, sad about the distance between them but hopeful that they'll cross it someday.

He wakes up again when they've arrived at Stan's apartment, the sky completely dark now. Stan turns off the engine as Kyle slowly blinks awake, a streetlight's orange glow spilling down onto the hood of the car, illuminating some glittery snowflakes.

"We're here," Stan says, softly. He's still holding on to the steering wheel, smiling at Kyle, anxious and sweet. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah, wonderfully," Kyle says. "Is that your stomach growling?"

"I'm pretty hungry," Stan says. "We could order a pizza?"

"Sounds perfect. Shall we go up?"

"We shall," Stan says, smirking. Kyle whacks his shoulder, though he appreciates being called on it when he sounds too British. He's American, it's important; he's looking forward to his Coors Light. As they walk up to Stan's apartment it occurs to him that he doesn't have any of his medications in his bag, just his inhaler and his insulin meter. Spencer kept all the hard stuff, doling it out to Kyle the addict in controlled doses. Kyle feels alright so far, but he's glad that Stan is a nurse with access to samples.

Kyle takes a shower while Stan orders the pizza, and he examines each of Stan's products carefully, charmed by his off-brand conditioner: so he's vain enough about his silky hair to use conditioner, but not to pay for anything fancy. Kyle uses it on his curls, and imagines they feel a little softer than usual as he blows them dry. He's almost sad that his carry on bag includes clean clothing, wishing he had an excuse to dress in Stan's clothes again.

The pizza is arriving just as Kyle leaves the bathroom, and Stan's banter with the delivery boy probably means he has this for dinner often. Kyle is jealous, lingering in the kitchen and drinking from an open can of Coors Light. He wonders if any of the gay porn Stan is so fond of includes random fucks with delivery people.

"Here you go," Stan says, closing the door on the pizza servant and bringing the pizza into the tiny kitchen. "Half cheese, half meat lover's."

Kyle could make a joke about what being a _meat lover _might mean about one's sexuality, but Stan is probably not the audience for that. He smiles and accepts a plate with two slices of cheese.

"Thanks," Kyle says. "Sorry I'm so boring."

"Only when it comes to pizza toppings," Stan says. "You make up for it in other areas."

"That's true."

They eat their pizza in front of the television, ignoring it favor of talking about their favorite foods. Stan's is this: meat lover's from Pizza Hut washed down with Coors Light. Kyle's is a sandwich with a proper baguette for a bun, melted brie cheese, smoked turkey and walnuts.

"Walnuts on a _sandwich_?" Stan says, wincing.

"It's the best place for walnuts!"

Kyle surprises himself by eating four pieces of greasy pizza, its flavor enhanced by the cheap beer. He's stuffed and sleepy again, his eyelids starting to droop as Stan scrolls through web pages on his phone, searching for a French bakery that might have proper baguettes, Kyle's head close to dropping onto Stan's shoulder. They've both got their socked feet up on the coffee table. It's snowing more heavily outside, and Kyle has never been so happy to be someplace warm.

"Here's one," Stan says. "The West Side Bakery. We could try that tomorrow. They're open until seven. I get off of work at four." He looks over at Kyle, smiling and lowering his shoulder as if to offer it as a pillow. Kyle takes him up on it, snuggling close. Nothing has ever felt this easy, and he's never been this calm. Stan touches Kyle's hair, trying to smooth his curls into order. Kyle closes his tired eyes.

"What will you do here all day?" Stan asks. "You'll be so bored."

"No way, dude. I'll look at porn on your computer if I get bored."

He feels bad for the joke, but Stan is smiling when Kyle looks up at him. He looks amused.

"What?" Kyle says.

"You said dude."

"Oh, yeah. Spencer hated it, so, you know. I started saying it a lot."

As if Spencer has been summoned, Kyle's phone buzzes with a new text message, but it's not from Spencer. It's from his mother. He considers not reading it, but he won't be able to sleep for wondering what she said. Stan is still pressed against him, and they read it together.

_Have just spoken with Spence. If this expedition is an attention seeking device of some sort, you've succeeded in getting mine. Darling, you are ill. When you're at your worst, you attach yourself to attractive men who treat you badly. This has precedent, Kyle. You are moving in circles. Please call me when you're again ready to participate in your own treatment. In the meantime, USE CONDOMS, darling. Love, Mum_

Kyle is shaking when he finishes reading, haunted by everything he's trying to leave behind. He tosses

his phone onto the coffee table like it's a grenade. Stan slides an arm around his shoulders and tugs him closer.

"I don't think you're ill," Stan says. "And I'm not going to treat you badly."

"I am ill," Kyle says. "You just happen to be the cure."

For a moment he's certain they're going to kiss, because they're quiet, studying each other's faces, sitting so close. Stan's eyelashes are amazingly pretty, the only delicate feature on his boyishly handsome face. Kyle wants to touch them. Before he can, Stan flinches like some part of him just woke up. He stands from the couch to collect the dirty plates.

"Do you have a toothbrush?" Stan asks. "Or do you need to use mine again?"

"I have one in my bag," Kyle says. He wishes he'd lied, wants to use Stan's.

"That's good," Stan says. He's in the kitchen, rinsing plates. Kyle makes himself useful, collecting the half-empty pizza box and bringing it to the fridge. He has to withhold laughter when he sees the fridge's contents: three cans of Coors Light, a nearly empty jug of milk, a jar of pickled jalapeños, a single potato, and a fancy jar of strawberry preserves that looks unopened.

"Carol gave that to me for Christmas," Stan says when Kyle examines the preserves.

"Who's Carol?" Kyle asks, nearly dropping the jar, panicked.

"This middle-aged lady who works with me," he says. "Another nurse."

"Why haven't you eaten her jam?" Kyle asks. He puts it back and shuts the fridge.

"I don't know what I'd put it on," Stan says. "I don't have a toaster."

"Your kitchen is a bit ill-equipped," Kyle says, looking around. "I could see to that. I've got some money, you know. I could help with the rent. My parents are quite wealthy."

"That doesn't bother you? Taking money from them?"

"Of course it bothers me," Kyle says. "But what am I supposed to do? Work?" He smiles, and Stan looks relieved when he realizes he's joking. Mostly joking.

"I bet I could help you get a job," Stan says. "Hey, maybe we could ask at that bakery tomorrow. They might be hiring for the holidays."

"Oh, the holidays," Kyle says, not yet wanting to have a meltdown over the prospect of part-time employment in food service. "I'd forgotten about those."

"I love Christmas," Stan says. "I get a tree and everything." He smiles and looks down at the dish rag in his hands. "It'll be nice to have someone else here. This year."

Kyle walks to him, and steps closer when Stan looks up at him with cautious curiosity. Stan doesn't flinch when Kyle touches his hands, the dish rag still crumpled between them. They both look down at it for a moment, listening to each other's breathing. Kyle looks up first, and Stan is slow to meet his eyes, blushing when he does.

"You never have to be alone again," Kyle says. "I'll stay as long as you want me to."

Kyle leans up to kiss him, startled by how good it feels, their chapped lips pressing together chastely. Stan makes a soft noise that isn't quite surprise, and Kyle pulls back, still on his tip-toes.

"Sorry," he says, though he's not, just terrified.

"No," Stan says. He's worrying the dish towel between his hands, staring down at it. "I – that was – don't be sorry." His face is on fire. "Kyle?"

"Yes?" Kyle surges up higher onto his toes, stopping short of another kiss. He wants to really taste Stan's lips, to lick them apart and push his tongue through them, which is weird, because he's usually bored by kissing, tongues, the whole ordeal.

"Do – do you want to sleep in my bed with me?" Stan looks like he'll cry if Kyle says no, or maybe he's going to burst into tears anyway. Kyle sinks back down onto his heels, his hands still cupped around Stan's.

"I'd fucking love that," Kyle says, sorry for the curse, because there's something so painfully innocent about this. Stan nods and leans down to kiss him again, but it's quick, a peck on his cheek.

"Kay," Stan says. "I'm gonna brush my teeth."

Stan's bed is unmade, the only light in his bedroom coming from the bathroom, where Stan is brushing at the sink. Kyle is already dressed for bed, in sweatpants and a t-shirt. He climbs under the mussed blankets, the smell of Stan's sheets ripping through him like an injection of ecstasy, making him shiver, goosebumps rising. He normally can't stand to get into bed without brushing his teeth, but he'll do it in the morning. He wants to be here waiting when Stan comes to bed.

The water turns off, then the light. Stan walks into the dark room, and Kyle can't see much, his eyes still adjusting, but he hears Stan unzipping his jeans, stepping out of them, dropping them to the floor. Under the blankets, Kyle is half-hard, not sure what to expect. Stan could push his legs over his head without a word and have him, but Kyle isn't not sure that's what he wants, at least not right away. He stays still, on his back, watching Stan climb under the blankets. When his boxer shorts are hidden under the comforter, Stan pulls his t-shirt off and throws it on the floor. He looks over at Kyle, still sitting up, and though Kyle can't see it in the dark, he knows Stan is blushing, that his cheeks are sticky with heat.

"Are you warm enough?" Stan asks.

"Not yet," Kyle says, not sure if Stan will take this cue, or if he'll even want to. Whatever he wants, part of it includes having Kyle in his bed. Kyle beams when Stan moves toward him, pulling him close under the blankets.

"Better?" Stan says when Kyle is pressed against his chest, wrapped up in his arms.

"Yes, thank you."

"Good." Stan rubs his fingers through Kyle's hair, unrolling a few curls. Kyle's cock is pretty obvious, hard against Stan's thigh, but he's content to lie like this for awhile, or a few years, Stan's heart beating fast under his cheek.

He sleeps, and when he finds himself at the shore of the frozen lake, he starts toward the surface and is pulled back by Stan. He's smiling at Kyle, wearing a blue hat with a red puff ball on top. He's just a little boy, but it's definitely Stan. Kyle jumps into his arms.

"Let's go home," Stan says, and Kyle nods. He's finally fallen asleep on the right side of the lake.


	7. Chapter 7

Kenny has been unable to stop thinking about the picture of Stan and Kyle since he received it, but he's been equally unable to figure out who sent it or what it means. The address on the return postcard, which he had to beg Bebe to show him and only got to see under threat of having his balls chopped off if he got her in trouble at work, was for a London apartment building that Kenny looked up on Google Maps. That doesn't really help, because he can't afford to go to London and doesn't know why the fuck anyone who lives there would know anything about Kyle and Stan. The name on the green postcard was C. Lefèvre, which doesn't sound familiar and hasn't yielded anything on Google.

A week after having received the picture, he's still clueless but hopeful. He locks down the garage and walks through the icy winter night to his car, ready to make his usual after work trip to the library. He and Karen don't have internet access in their apartment – they don't even have a computer – and he's been a regular at the library all week, researching memory lapses and Googling for Stan and Kyle's names online, trying to come up with new angles of inquiry. He's not exactly good at this kind of stuff; he didn't even finish tenth grade. Butters has been helping him with ideas, but he's never available to join him at the library after his shift, has to be back at Cartman's house after sundown to wait on him hand and foot. Apparently he's told Cartman all about this development – Kenny knew that he would – and Cartman refuses to use his department's considerable resources to help solve this mystery. He thinks Kenny is a burned out lunatic who needs to forget about his imaginary friends. Whenever Kenny starts to feel like Cartman might be right, he thinks of what Kyle's response to Cartman's disbelief would be, and smiles to himself when he remembers the way they used to tear into each other. Kenny isn't imagining things: there was once someone in South Park who hated Cartman more than Kenny does.

The library is empty when Kenny arrives, as usual. It's a small building, and Kenny remembers Wendy lobbying to have it expanded when they were in high school, but he likes it the way it is, cozy and manageable. He heads over to the front desk for the complimentary cup of Tweak Brothers coffee that Tweek has been offering him on a nightly basis, and waves when Tweek comes out of the back room with a stack of books in his arms. Tweek shouts in surprise and the books go flying.

"Jesus Christ!" he says, his eyes bugged out. "Ah – I didn't hear you come in! You scared the shit out of me!"

"Sorry," Kenny says, helping himself to the coffee. Tweek keeps the coffee maker close to his computer, for easy access. "Aren't you used to seeing me every night by now?" Kenny asks.

"Fuck, man!" Tweek says, still hyperventilating. "I guess so – it makes me nervous when people actually come in here." He's tugging at his rumpled shirt, his eye twitching.

"Yeah, I figured you didn't take this job for the people watching opportunities," Kenny says. He sets the coffee down to let it cool and helps Tweek collect the books he dropped.

"Thanks," Tweek says. "I'm having a pretty fucking terrible day."

"Yeah? What happened?"

"Ah – God – my fucking car broke down! I had to walk here from Stark's Pond this morning, and now I'm fucking screwed. Shit! Wendy's going to kill me!"

"Why, 'cause of the car? Dude, I can fix it for you."

"But you'd have to tow it! Towing costs money! And it's snowing, so we'd have to dig it out first! That'd probably cost extra, plus the repairs, and, shit, goddammit! Why is this happening to me?"

"Calm down," Kenny says, though he knows it's pointless to say this to Tweek. "It's probably just your battery or something. What'd it sound like when it broke down?"

"Like – like a gun shot. It scared the shit out of me, I thought I was going to die!"

"Uh-huh. Well, look, shit happens. It's an older car – 2002, right? Wendy's not going to be mad –"

"Yes, she will be! She'll kill me! You don't know what she's like!"

Kenny makes a noncommittal noise and returns to his coffee. He does know Wendy, pretty well in fact, though no one in town really knows about it except Butters. When Kenny was floundering, wanting to die for good and unwilling to be any more alive than lethal amounts of crack would allow, Wendy made it her personal mission to rehabilitate him. She once slapped the shit out of him after Butters peeled him off the floor of a motel room, and it felt like the first time Kenny had been fully awake in years. He didn't understand what she was doing there, but as soon as he saw her he knew he was in trouble.

"She can be pretty scary," Kenny says. "But, dude, uh. You're her husband." He still has a hard time saying so without wincing. Tweek wouldn't be that bad looking if he could stop shaking and gnawing at the insides of his cheeks for five seconds, but Wendy is a bombshell, and everyone in town was shocked when she announced her engagement to Tweek. Kenny supposes she does like a good charity case. He drinks from his coffee and takes a seat at Tweek's computer, watching him reorder the books he was carrying.

"She doesn't like it when I waste money," Tweek says, twitching.

"Having a functioning car is not a waste of money. You can't be walking all the way here from your house every day, you'll freeze to death."

"Yeah, but – she's, ah! She's going to think it's my fault that the car broke down! That I don't know how to take care of it!"

"So what's she going to do? Hit you?"

"Maybe!"

"Seriously?" Kenny says, raising his eyebrows.

"Ah – okay, no, but I'd rather she just hit me than get the way she does!" He groans and takes two handfuls of his hair, wincing. "She's going to leave me, I know it! Then I'll be alone forever!"

Kenny withholds a groan. He doesn't want to sit here and counsel Tweek about his marriage, which in Kenny's opinion was always doomed to fail. Most people in South Park assumed that Wendy married Tweek so that she could take over the family business, but Kenny doesn't think she would be that cold. Tweek's parents died in car accident during Tweek's senior year of high school, and he never did much with the little coffee shop he inherited beyond keeping it afloat. After they were married, Wendy tried to make Tweak Brothers a national chain, and at first it seemed like she would succeed, but then the economy tanked, and now she and Tweek are rumored to be in a lot of financial trouble, one store after another closing down, leaving them with crippling debts.

"If you want, I can fix your car on the down low," Kenny says. "Wendy doesn't have to know about it."

"Really? You'd do that? Ah – Kenny, you're such a good friend!"

"Um, thanks," Kenny says, not sure if he'd consider Tweek a friend. He probably shouldn't put too fine a point on it, since his only regular social companions are Karen, who never leaves their apartment, and Butters, who is always attached to Cartman's short leash.

"Can you go fix it right now?" Tweek asks.

"Nah, man. My tow guy charges double for jobs after five. Relax – I'll give you a ride home when I'm done with my research."

"Research? That's what you've been doing in here every night?"

"Yeah," Kenny says. "What'd you think I was doing?"

"N-nothing! I didn't think anything!"

"You thought I was looking at porn, didn't you?"

"Ah – maybe, but, that's cool! You can look at porn if you want! Just don't give the computers any viruses. Oh, God – if they got porn viruses people would think I put them on there, gah, they would fire me –!"

"Tweek, I'm not looking at porn. I promise. Do you remember when everyone thought I was crazy?"

"Um, ah – I didn't think that!" Tweek goes for his coffee, avoiding Kenny's eyes.

"Yeah, you did, and that's okay. I know how it sounded, all that stuff about the boys who disappeared. But I just got proof that they're real."

"Proof?"

"Yeah, well, that they grew up, anyway. Shit, I hope they're not in trouble. I don't think that was the impression I was supposed to get from the picture, though."

"What picture?" Tweek is extra twitchy, and Kenny knows he shouldn't stress him out with this, but Tweek did say they were friends, and he's probably pretty good at research, even if he did only take the job at the library so that he could hide away from everyone with his coffee all day.

"Do either of these guys look at all familiar you?" Kenny asks, pulling the picture out of the shoulder bag he's been bringing to and from work lately, which also contains what little information he's been able to gather about the picture. The bag is purple and red, a relic from Karen's high school years, and he knows he looks ridiculous carrying it around, but he's not willing to let the picture leave his side. He shows it to Tweek, who shakes his head.

"I don't know those guys! Who are they? You said they're in trouble?"

"Well, I don't know that, and they seem okay here, but if someone wants me to know that they're still alive somewhere, that might mean they could be in trouble soon if I don't figure this out. Or maybe South Park would be in trouble – what if you guys forgot someone else? What if you forgot Wendy had ever existed?"

Tweek hesitates, his trembling shoulders going still for a moment. "Ah – that'd be bad!" He drinks from his coffee cup. Kenny snorts.

"Okay, bad example, maybe. Who's your best friend?"

"Best friend?"

"Yeah, who would you miss the most in all of South Park if they disappeared?"

The library door opens and Tweek jumps, spilling coffee onto his shirt. Kenny's hands curl into fists when he sees who's walking in, wearing a sleek black overcoat and the same stoic expression that's been glued to his face since they were kids. Craig Tucker, father of Karen's illegitimate baby and Kenny's new least favorite person in South Park, taking the title from Cartman.

Craig walks over to the front desk and stares at the two of them as if he's expecting someone to come forward and offer to take his coat.

"W-what are you doing here?" Tweek asks. He's shaking so hard that Kenny wonders if Tweek owes Craig money. He wouldn't put loan-sharking past Craig, who became a millionaire in college after he invented a new kind of pop-up ad that can't be blocked on websites.

"Hello, asshole," Kenny says. "He asked you a question."

Craig looks at Kenny, no hint of alarm registering on his face, despite the fact that the last time they saw each other Kenny tried to attack him with a bar stool.

"I need a book," Craig says. He puts his hands into his coat pockets and looks at Tweek. "What's he doing here?"

"Tweek? He works here, dumb shit."

"I meant you," Craig says, looking back to Kenny, his gray eyes narrowing slightly.

"You're not going to believe this," Kenny says. "But I actually came here for the books, too. Crazy coincidence, I know."

"I didn't realize you could read," Craig says. Kenny curses and surges toward him, but Tweek jumps up to stop him.

"Don't fight in here, please!" Tweek says. He's sweating now, too, pushing Kenny back behind the counter. "I can't handle fighting – ah, God, it's too much, please!"

"Fine," Kenny says. He adjusts his purple-red shoulder bag. He wants to tear into Craig for being late with Karen's last check, but Tweek doesn't know that Craig is the father, and Karen would kill Kenny if he ruined her agreement with Craig and forced her to consider taking him to court. As much as Kenny would love to see Craig submit to a paternity test and get slapped with legally binding child support, he knows it would be a nightmare for Karen, who would have to find some kind of pro bono joker to represent her, while Craig would hire a team of fancy lawyers who would drag Karen through the mud, probably with the help of Kenny's colorful arrest history.

"W-what kind of book do you need?" Tweek asks Craig when an uncomfortable silence has descended, Kenny unwilling to leave the front desk area with Tweek this obviously freaked out by Craig's presence. Craig rolls his eyes at the question.

"The self-help section is that way," Kenny says, pointing.

"You'd know," Craig says. Kenny moves toward him again, but Tweek holds him back.

"Please, Kenny!" Tweek says. "Craig – ah! Guys, don't fight!"

"I guess I shouldn't be too surprised to see him here," Craig says. "You can always find a McCormick in any place in town that's giving away something for free."

"Okay," Kenny says, throwing his bag down. "You're fucking dead."

"At least one McCormick, I should say," Craig says as Tweek holds Kenny back. He's surprisingly strong. "How many of you are there these days?" Craig asks. "Now that your sister's of childbearing age, I expect they'll be a whole new set of mouths for our tax dollars to feed."

Kenny stops fighting against Tweek's hold. Craig is testing him, trying to get him to say something about the pregnancy in front of Tweek. That would void his agreement with Karen, and the money would dry up. Kenny turns and punches the door to Tweek's office instead of Craig's face, shouting when his fist throbs with pain. Tweek shouts, too, putting his hands over his face. Craig sniffs.

"I just remembered," he says. "I already have a library. In my house." He pauses to let that sink in, Kenny grimacing and Tweek cowering. "Later, assholes," Craig says, and he heads for the door.

"I fucking hate that guy!" Kenny shouts, wanting to punch the door again but afraid that he might break a bone or two if he let himself do it. "You should have let me hit him!"

"I'm sorry!" Tweek says, dropping down to the floor, his hands over his head like he's in the middle of a bomb drill. "God, shit, ah, I can't – Jesus –"

"Dude, it's okay," Kenny says, kneeling down beside him. "I'm not going to hit you. What's the matter? Is Craig bullying you?"

"I don't want to talk about it!" Tweek shouts, covering his eyes with his hands.

"Tweek, what the fuck?"

"Nothing! Ah – shit! That guy just stresses me out!"

"Yeah, you and everyone else who's ever had the misfortune of dealing with him. Here, calm down. Have some coffee."

Kenny can't concentrate on his research, still fuming about what Craig said, what he's done, his smugness and privilege. He gives up after thirty minutes and collects Tweek from the front desk, telling him that no one will care if he shuts down the library half an hour early. Tweek is panicked at the thought that he might get in trouble, but apparently he's more afraid of Wendy, because he agrees to leave early for the sake of getting a ride with Kenny.

"If you were trying to get a tenant list for an apartment building in London, how would you go about that?" Kenny asks when Tweek is buckled into the passenger seat beside him, tugging at his seat belt like he's afraid it's going to choke him.

"I don't know, man," Tweek says. "I don't really want to get involved. What if it's a government conspiracy? What if they'll kill anyone who starts looking into it too deeply?"

"I'm not afraid to die if it means figuring this out," Kenny says. He knows it's not really fair to say, because he would come back, and dying would mean leaving Karen alone for an unpredictable amount of time, but this mystery very nearly ruined his life and still haunts him on a daily basis. He used to think that he wouldn't be able to get well until he got some kind of validation that he didn't just imagine Stan and Kyle, and though he's been able to quit using hard drugs, he doesn't consider himself recovered. Ten years without an orgasm probably isn't healthy in any doctor's opinion, and Kenny knows it's stupid, the idea that he'll return to something resembling normal if Stan and Kyle rematerialize, but he can't help feeling like having them back would mean change everything.

They reach Tweek and Wendy's house, which is sizable, a mud-crusted FOR SALE almost covered up by the snow. They're trying to downgrade, but no one is buying four bedroom houses in South Park right now. It makes Kenny sad to think of the empty bedrooms, though for all he knows Wendy and Tweek never wanted to fill them with children. Kenny can't imagine what an amalgam of the two of them would be like, anyway.

"Well, here we are," Kenny says when Tweek just sits in the passenger seat, hyperventilating and staring at the house.

"She's going to ask where the car is," Tweek says. "Shit! What do I say?"

"Say you had drinks with me after work and I was your designated driver. She knows I've got a high tolerance."

"She does?" Tweek gives Kenny a panicked look. Kenny is surprised that Wendy hasn't told him all about what happened. He never really expected her to uphold her word about keeping his secret, and he actually feels bad about his lack of trust in her, at least until the front door of the house slams open and Wendy comes storming out, making a beeline for the car.

"Shit!" Tweek shrieks, trying to unbuckle his seat belt, his hands shaking too hard to manage it. Kenny reaches over him to help, then just rolls down the window when Wendy arrives, glowering at them.

"What the hell is this?" she says. "Where's the car?"

"Don't be mad!" Tweek says, finally managing to undo the seat belt, the buckle snapping him in the chin. "Ow – shit – ah! It, um, the car, there was –"

"It's my fault," Kenny says. "I wanted to try out this new oil change machine we got in at the shop, and I talked Tweek into letting him use it on his car. Thing's busted, of course. I promise I'll have the car fixed tomorrow, though, no charge."

"You are so full of shit," Wendy says, seeing through him as usual. He mirrors her angry glare, feeling the sting of her hand across his face again.

"I'm sorry!" Tweek shouts, his hands over his ears. "I don't know what happened, something blew out, I swear I didn't do it on purpose –"

"Will you calm down?" Wendy says, opening the passenger side door. "And where's your jacket? You're going to get sick again. Tweek, goddammit, if you have to take more time off of work they're going to give that job to a high schooler."

"Hey, give him a break," Kenny says. "He had a hard day, okay?"

"Oh, Kenny, Jesus Christ," she says, pinching her eyes shut as if she's tortured by the mere sound of his voice. "Since when are you two even friends? Did he call you about the car or something?"

"I happened to be at the library." He regrets this as soon as he's said it, expecting another comment like Craig's. Wendy raises her eyebrows.

"Oh?" she says. "Did someone finally talk you into getting your GED?" She looks so hopeful that Kenny wants to tell her yes, though he used to laugh at her when she tried to berate him into studying for it.

"He found those missing boys!" Tweek says. "I told you it was probably some massive government cover up! There's a picture and everything! Now we're all gonna die – shit! I need to get out of this car, there could be a bomb!"

Tweek flings himself out of the car and runs past Wendy, toward the house. She straightens up to watch him go, putting her hand over her face when he slams the door behind him and closes the curtains. Kenny is going to shut the passenger door and get the hell out of there, but Wendy climbs into the car before he can, shutting the door behind her. She puts her hands on her knees and stares straight ahead.

"Um," Kenny says. "Where to?"

"Nowhere," Wendy says. She closes her eyes, her hands going tense around her knees again. "Shit. I need to get him back into therapy. There's only one psychoanalyst in South Park, and Tweek thinks she wants to kill him. I can't afford to drive him into North Park for appointments, gas is so expensive –"

"Is he on medication or anything?" Kenny asks. She shakes her head.

"He's too afraid of side effects. I don't want to force him." She pauses and looks over at Kenny. "I mean, I've thought of crushing the stuff up in his food, don't get me wrong."

"I'm sure you have."

Wendy narrows her eyes at him, her mouth twitching the way it does when she's frustrated by the fact that everyone in the room can't see that she's obviously right.

"What's this about missing boys?" she says. "You don't mean – those ones –"

"Stan and Kyle."

"Oh, Kenny." She closes her eyes again.

"Here," Kenny says, reaching into the backseat and digging in his bag. "Look at this. Do these guys look at all familiar to you?" He flicks the overhead light on while Wendy looks at the picture. "Take your time," Kenny says. "Really think. Stan was your –"

"Boyfriend, yes, I remember," Wendy says, muttering. "Which one's Stan again?"

"The dark haired one! C'mon, Wendy. You used to ice skate with him at Stark's Pond. We'd all make fun of him for holding your hand."

"Kenny," she says. She's still looking at the picture, but she's shaking her head. "This is so distressing. I really thought you'd let this go. Is this the thing you were hounding Bebe about the other day?"

"Yeah – someone sent that to me, certified mail, somebody named C. Lefèvre. Does that ring any bells?"

"No, Kenny." She hands the picture back to him, looking genuinely sad. It brings him right back to sixteen, ninety-six pounds and ready to blow his brains out to reset his body after another round of STDs. Repeat customers could never believe how tight he stayed. His claim to fame. He's red-faced as he puts the picture away.

"Forget it," Kenny says, gripping the steering wheel. "Go take care of Tweek. That's what you do best, right? Rescue hopeless people from themselves?"

"Fuck you," Wendy says, but it's soft, embarrassed. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Kenny looks away from her, feeling guilty. She did care about him back then. There was that one time when she cried and cleaned his face with a wash cloth. And that other time, when he woke up and she was still there, her hand on his forehead.

"I can't believe you married him," Kenny says, muttering. He needs a beer, needs her to get out of the car. "That's all."

"Don't," Wendy says. She opens the door of the car and puts one leg out, sighs. "Fuck," she says, looking at the FOR SALE sign. "I almost forgot why I came out here in the first place. I was going to dig that thing out of the snow."

"You really should go easier on Tweek," Kenny says. "If you love him." He wants to hear that she does. He wasn't invited to the wedding. Or maybe he was, but he definitely got drunk instead of attending.

"Just stay out of it, Kenny," Wendy says. She climbs out of the car and leans back down to frown at him. "And don't start thinking about those boys again. I don't know where this delusion came from, but this is what hurt you before, thinking that we all thought you were crazy."

"Well, didn't you?"

Wendy sighs. "We were concerned," she says.

"Who's we? You and Butters was concerned. Everyone else just wanted me to shut the fuck up about it already."

"Whoever sent you that picture is cruel," Wendy says. "You should tear it up and forget the whole thing. You've moved on, Kenny. You've come so far."

"I'm glad you believe that," Kenny says coldly, and the hurt that floods her features makes him want to take it back, so he shakes his head. "No, you're right," he says. "I'm better, I'm fine. I gotta go, though, I'm burning gas here."

"Jesus, Kenny." Wendy pushes her bangs out of her face. She still keeps her hair long, and it's a comfort, like everything else that was true both before and after Stan and Kyle.

"Don't worry about me," Kenny says. "You did everything you could."

"Fuck you," she says, and she means it this time. She slams the car door and runs toward the house. Kenny starts to back the car out of the driveway, but he stops at the end and puts it in park. Wendy is in the house now, a second door slammed. Kenny climbs out and clears the snow away from the FOR SALE sign, hoping that she's not watching from the window. When he's finished he gets back in the car and drives away, visions of crack pipes dancing through his head like those movie theater cartoons of popcorn and candy. He'll just have an extra beer with dinner, maybe two. She'd hate him so much if he smoked the hard stuff again. Some part of her would know as soon as he sucked in that first lungful, and he doesn't want to break her heart.


	8. Chapter 8

Butters is working on dinner when Eric comes home, and he goes for the fridge to get Eric his beer when he hears the door. Eric walks into the kitchen and grabs Butters' arm before he can open the bottle for him, spinning him around and pinning him against the door of the fridge. His breath smells like beer already, and Butters thinks jealously of the hours he spent with Clyde and the others after leaving the station, Butters here by himself making Eric's macaroni casserole.

"Hey, Eric," Butters says, a bit taken off guard as Eric starts licking his neck, pressing him against the fridge so snugly that Butters can feel Eric's belt buckle making an intention in his stomach. He sighs and tilts his head to give Eric better access, his hands skimming down along Eric's sides. Eric has taken his jacket off, but he's still wearing his gun, and the hard shape of it makes Butters shiver as his fingers skim over it.

"Smells good in here," Eric says, spreading Butters' legs with his thigh. "You want to get fucked over the side of the table?"

"Dinner would burn," Butters says, casting a wary look at his bubbling cheese sauce.

"I could do it while you cook," Eric says. He pulls back to give Butters a wicked grin. He doesn't seem drunk, just hungry and unguarded. "Over the stove. You could stir that stuff while I'm plowing you."

"It'd be hard to concentrate on getting it right," Butters says, his fists rubbing together. He's getting hard, rubbing himself against Eric's thigh, but he's spent a lot of time on this dinner, and Eric will complain that it's not good after he's had his fill of sex and wants to eat.

"Clyde and those guys were talking about their nagging wives," Eric says. "I was laughing my ass off at those dumb shits." He takes hold of Butters' chin. "Don't I have the best little wife in town?"

"I – yeah," Butters says, turning pink. He's not sure that Eric really wants him referred to as his wife, though he does say this sometimes, and calls him a house husband, too. They were never even boyfriends, at least not nominally. They just did filthy things to each other in Eric's bedroom during high school, and when Eric's mother died, Butters moved in here to take care of him. Butters had been at college, but when he came home for the funeral and saw the state Eric was in, he couldn't leave him again.

"I want to dress my little wife up and take her out on the town," Eric says. Butters moans at the thought of what that might entail, his cock growing harder even as he breaks into a nervous sweat. He loves dressing up for Eric, like a little doll or a dirty hooker, whatever he wants, but he doesn't want to leave the house that way, doesn't want anyone else to see.

"I need to stir the cheese sauce," Butters says. Eric's thigh is still massaging his cock, his elbows pinned on either side of Butters' head.

"Fine, stir the cheese sauce," Eric says, releasing him. "I'm gonna go upstairs and change. And I'll pick out something for you to wear, too. We're going to Hammerheads."

Butters swallows down a whine. He's tired, and Hammerheads can be so noisy, so stressful with the other men looking at him, licking their lips, doing things to each other in dark corners. Eric loves it, and always spends the whole trip home saying that Butters was the hottest piece of ass in the place. Butters nods and goes back to the stove without complaint.

He tries to distract himself from his dread of Hammerheads by making the macaroni, but he's made this casserole so many times that he could do it in his sleep, and it's not much of a distraction. It's not that he's never had a good time at Hammerheads. Sometimes Eric gives him something to drink to loosen him up, and Butters ends up liking all the stares he gets when he's straddling Eric's lap, wearing next to nothing, the powder blue collar around his neck informing everyone who watches that he's the property of _E.T.C._ The Halloween parties are fun, too. He's just not up for it tonight, after spending the whole day steaming the downstairs carpets and grocery shopping, and he's been having weird nightmares ever since Kenny got fixated on his forgotten friends again, bad ones about being trapped in a dark cave, and about Kenny using drugs, and watching helplessly as Eric tries to fire his gun at an advancing enemy and finds it empty. He hasn't been sleeping well, even with Clyde Frog clutched against him and Eric breathing into his hair.

Eric is humming when he comes back downstairs, Butters pulling the completed casserole from the oven. The cheese sauce has browned properly, despite being slightly overcooked after that interlude at the fridge. Eric has dressed in black pants and a dark gray button-down shirt, but nothing about his ensemble gives any clues to what he wants Butters to wear. He comes up behind Butters at the stove and nips at his neck as he's pulling off his oven mitts.

"I think it turned out okay," Butters says.

"Looks good to me," Eric says. He reaches up under Butters' shirt to rub his belly and squeeze his little A-cups, pulling him close. "You're all tense. Do I need to get you drunk?"

"Oh, Eric, I don't know. I got a lot to do tomorrow, I don't want to feel all yucky when I wake up."

"Top shelf liquor can't make you sick," Eric says, though Butters knows that's not true. He turns from the stove and watches Eric go to the bar in the living room, mixing something up for him in one of the little crystal glasses that Butters polished this afternoon. Eric comes back into the kitchen with it, humming, still smiling like he's got all kinds of plans he can't wait to enact. Butters isn't sure which is scarier, Eric when he's like this or when he's having a rage.

"What's this?" Butters asks when he takes the glass from Eric.

"Drink it," Eric says. "And I'll take a beer with my macaroni."

Eric sits at the kitchen table instead of going for the couch, maybe just to make sure Butters finishes his drink. Butters lets Eric watch him swallow it all down, both of them still half-hard in their pants. Butters would have happily consented to getting fucked while stirring the cheese sauce if he'd known that dressing up for Hammerheads was the alternative, but now it's too late. Eric is excited, his foot bouncing under the table as Butters serves him his beer and a big slice of the casserole. Butters is already feeling fuzzy from the drink, which was strong, vodka mixed with some sweeter liquor.

"Sit in my lap," Eric says, and Butters does so gladly, settling back against him. Eric takes a forkful of the macaroni and moans happily at the taste, which makes Butters smile. He gasps when Eric's other hand slides down into the front of his pants, cupping his cock, rubbing.

"This is so goddamn good," Eric says, eating more. He rubs Butters harder, and Butters lets his head drop back onto Eric's shoulder, his legs spreading. "Makes me want to eat you like a side dish," Eric says, licking his neck.

"I'm glad you l-like it," Butters says. He twitches his hips upward, sighing. The tipsy feeling is suddenly pleasant, making his head swim while Eric gropes him, his hand so warm. Butters just wants to stay here in the kitchen and let Eric gobble him up like a good meal, wants to hide here in their house all night. It's so cold outside, and it was sleeting earlier, when Butters wrangled the groceries.

"Here, try some," Eric says, lifting his fork. Butters leans forward to take a bite, nodding and letting his cheek rest against Eric's as he chews and swallows. It's good, a little cheesier and saltier than Butters likes, but that's Eric's mother's recipe.

"Can I have a real snack?" Butters asks. A 'snack' is their pet name for a blow job, and if Eric comes he might get too tired to go out. Eric shakes his head, giving Butters' cock a squeeze that verges on painful, though it only makes his legs open wider.

"You don't get my dick until we're home from the club," Eric says, shifting his hips so that Butters can feel his erection. "If you've been good enough."

"What if I'm bad?" Butters asks, starting to feel drunk, either from the liquor or from what Eric's hand is doing, his fingers just squeezing and releasing, slow.

"If you're bad, you'll have to sleep at the foot of the bed."

"No!" It's the worst punishment there is. Butters would rather be tied up, spanked hard, forced to wear a cock ring while Eric teases his prostate. He actually likes all of those things, and almost every other form of punishment that Eric has come up with for him, but sleeping at the foot of the bed makes him cry real tears. It's so cold and lonely down there, away from Eric.

"Well, you'd better be good, then, huh?" Eric says, chewing macaroni. He takes a pull of beer and then makes Butters drink some. "That's good," he says, watching him swallow. "I want you all punchy and shameless. That's when you become a little show off, isn't it?"

"Mhmm," Butters says irritably, not drunk enough to want that yet.

Eric finishes his macaroni casserole and beer, and he finishes Butters off, too, reaching into his underwear to pump him dry. Butters is ten times sleepier after he's come, spilled back onto his Eric and feeling dazed from the alcohol.

"Now you've ruined these clothes," Eric says, pulling his hand out and wiping it on Butters' pants before helping Butters to stand. "I guess we'd better get you a change, hmm?"

"Nothing where you can see my butt," Butters says, pleading. "It's too cold for that."

"Oh, Christ, you'll be outside for all of two minutes. Here, have another drink."

Butters does, beginning to enjoy it about halfway through. He giggles when Eric lifts him onto his back to carry him up the stairs. For some reason it occurs to him that Christmas will be here soon. It's something about the warmth of the house and the unforgiving weather outside, making him think of the tree glowing down in the living room, and the way he likes to look at the lights on the tree from the second floor landing when all the other lights are turned off.

"I got you some new stuff," Eric says when Butters is sitting on their bed, drowsy and curious now. Eric pulls a long white box out from under the bed, and Butters claps his hands, thinking again of Christmas. He watches Eric pull items from the box: a tiny pair of black shorts that will barely cover Butters' ass, some thick black ribbony stuff that looks like it's made of a jersey material, and a fluffy white snow hat that might be the prissiest thing Butters has ever seen.

"Try them on," Eric says, already pulling Butters' shirt off.

"What's this?" Butters asks, picking up the ribbon thing.

"You wrap it around your shoulders – see, like this," Eric says, demonstrating. "Then across your chest, here, just under your nipples, and then it ties in the back." He makes a bow. It's kind of cute, and looks better once the shorts are on. They're a little small, and Butters tugs at the crotch, turning to look at himself in the mirror.

"See, it shows your tattoo," Eric says, his eyes lit up like a child's when he has a new toy. "So you don't even need the collar. Everyone can see you're mine, it's right there on your skin." He rubs the tattoo, and Butters contemplates this, still looking at himself in the mirror. This outfit makes his stomach look pudgy, and he kind of liked it when the tattoo was his secret with Eric.

"But I like the collar," Butters says. He's in the mood to be petulant, though he knows he shouldn't risk being sent to the end of the bed.

"Fine, wear the collar," Eric says, rolling his eyes. He gets it from the top drawer of their bedroom dresser. "I think it's Leash Law Night anyway." He fastens the collar around Butters' neck, then adds the finishing touch: the fluffy white hat, which looks ridiculous, especially with all the tight black stuff.

"It doesn't match," Butters says, wanting it off. It's important to him that his outfits look good, especially if other people are going to see them.

"The hat's just for when we're outside," Eric says. "C'mon, put on your boots."

"The black ones?"

"Yeah, with the tassels."

Wearing his favorite boots makes Butters feel a little better about the dumb hat. They're proper snow boots, water proofed and fur-lined on the inside, soft and warm, but they're also cute, the laces wrapping around them front to back, culminating in two little black poof balls that bounce when he walks. Downstairs, he pulls on his pea coat and buttons it over his exposed skin, knowing he'll be freezing anyway, at least until they reach the car.

Butters hurries into the Hummer while Eric locks up the house. He still gets a little thrill out of riding in this car, which Eric's mother bought for him when he was in high school, months before he'd even passed his driving test. Butters had to walk to Eric's house after school, was never offered a ride lest they be seen together in public, and he didn't actually ride in the Hummer until a few weeks after Liane's death, when Eric finally emerged from the second floor of the house, still puffy-eyed, and announced that he was going to the store. Butters was taken off guard; he'd been curled up on the sofa reading magazines, expecting Eric to spend another day in bed, refusing to get up except to slump into the bathroom. Butters had nodded slowly when Eric made his announcement about going to the store, glad to see him making progress, and wasn't sure what to say when Eric just stood there staring at him, his massive shoulders still rounded by grief.

"So?" Eric said. "Are you coming with me or not?"

Butters still remembers first climbing into the passenger seat of the Hummer: the immaculately kept leather, the impressive upgrades on the dash, the custom moon roof spilling afternoon sunlight down into his lap. But it wasn't the quality of the car that moved him, it was being able to ride next to Eric, gliding through the streets at his side, belonging there. After Liane died, Eric made no attempt to hide the fact that Butters had essentially moved in with him, and no one dared to make a joke about it, as ruined as he was by his losing his mother. Everyone assumed Eric was all the more dangerous while grieving, which might have been true, but with Butters he was soft and tired, needy. They didn't actually make it to the store that day, and Butters was fairly certain that Eric hadn't had a specific one in mind. They just drove around for awhile, parked in the driveway again, and Eric stayed with Butters on the couch for the rest of the day, his head in Butters' lap.

"You're not falling asleep over there, are you?" Eric asks as they near Hammerheads, the Hummer's windshield wipers pushing the snow aside like feathers scattering dust.

"No," Butters says. "Just thinking."

"You sound pretty sober for someone who's had two Sex on the Beaches."

"Sex on the Beaches," Butters says, giggling, his eyelids heavy when he looks over at Eric.

"Never mind," Eric says.

They arrive, and Butters is still opposed to this idea enough to find the crowded parking lot annoying. It's a Tuesday night, and with most of the gay men in South Park deeply in the closet, there's no reason for Hammerheads to be this packed. He gets out of the Hummer and takes Eric's arm, the two of them tromping through the dirty slush in the parking lot.

"My legs are gonna get all red," Butters says when the wind blows hard and icy against them.

"Your ass is about to be all red if you don't quit bitching," Eric says. He holds the door of the club open for Butters, music spilling out into the otherwise silent night. Butters walks inside, biting down on a smile at the thought of being spanked. He hopes Eric wasn't threatening do it in public, his smile fading at the thought. The usual bouncer is just inside the door, a guy named Steve who claims, like most of the men inside the club do when they're at work, not to be gay. He nods to them and ushers them inside.

"No off leash collars," Steve says, pointing to his own neck.

"Oh, Jesus, fine," Eric says. He digs a thin black leash from the pocket of his coat and fastens it to the ring on Butters' collar. "They're so uptight about this shit," he says, muttering and walking with Butters to the coat room, where Butters is glad to be able to remove his hat. He gives his pea coat to Eric, too drunk to care that he's nearly naked without it. He peers into the club while Eric gets a ticket for their coats. The main room is mostly populated by regulars, along with a few unfamiliar faces.

In a bigger town, Hammerheads might be considered a dive, but for South Park it's pretty swank. The lighting is low for obvious reasons, and there's no stage or caged dancers, just plush red couches and glossy black tables, the room lined with a bar on one side and a collection of semi-private lounge areas on the other, trussed up to look like mini opium dens, loaded with pillows and curtained with gauzy red material. Eric usually opts for the sofas in the middle of the club rather than the more private corners, wanting to show Butters off. Most of the usual club-goers are around twenty years older than them, and they all watch with envy as Eric leads Butters to the bar on his leash. It makes Butters nervous, despite the drinks, and he clings to Eric's arm while Eric orders a beer for himself and another Sex on the Beach for Butters.

"Hey, relax," Eric says, reaching down to rub Butters' tattoo. It's shadowed by the curve of his ass, which is not entirely contained by the shorts. "You look hot."

"What's Craig doing here?" Butters asks, his gaze fixated on one of the few people in the room who isn't staring at him. Craig is looking down at something – someone – on the floor, and he's holding a martini, expressionless as usual.

"Craig's a total fag, you didn't know that?" Eric says, handing Butters his drink. "C'mon, let's go fuck with him."

"I don't like him, though," Butters says. "Eric. He's mean."

"Oh, he's a harmless piece of crap. C'mon." Eric uses the leash to tug Butters forward, and Butters takes a big gulp from his drink on the way over. He almost spits it out all over Craig when he sees who's sitting at his feet, leash-less but obviously claimed, trembling while Craig pets his hair. It's Tweek, the coffee guy. Wendy's husband!

"You're supposed to use a leash, Craig, you dick," Eric says as he sits down beside him. He points to the floor, and Butters settles down at Eric's feet, resting his hand on top of Eric's boot, glad for the chance to hide against the sofa. He stares at Tweek, who looks at Butters, grits his teeth, looks away and looks back again, twitching.

"That leash thing is stupid," Craig says. "It's not like he's going anywhere." He takes his hand from Tweek's hair and throws back the rest of his drink. "The leash is a tired prop."

"Whatever," Eric says, though Butters knows he doesn't like the leashes much, either. "Don't come to fucking Leash Law Night if you're going to ruin it for everyone else. Isn't that Wendy's slave you've got there? She's not here, is she? I always had a feeling she was secretly a man."

"You're just saying that 'cause she beat you up when we were kids," Craig says. "And I think he's pretty obviously mine." He bumps Tweek's chin with his knee. "Aren't you?"

"Ah – yes! Yes, sir, completely, totally –"

"Yes will suffice," Craig says, narrowing his eyes at Tweek, who shrinks. He's wearing nothing but a pair of tight red briefs and red ballet slippers with no laces, his wild blond hair more orderly than usual but still poking up in random cowlicks. Craig gives Butters a bored glance and looks back to Eric. "Sir is a tired device," he says.

"You're a tired device," Eric says, scoffing. He drinks from his beer. "Are you still trying to be the mayor?"

"I'm going to be the mayor. No one else in this town can afford to run properly."

"Well, I think you're aware that you'll need my cooperation," Eric says.

"In exchange for me not going to the press with a story about how you took a bribe, sure," Craig says. Eric laughs.

"Oh, Craig," Eric says. "So naive, so green, it's almost cute. I control the press in this town. Have since high school, basically. If you want to pretend to underestimate me, that's cool, but you need me if you want any kind of power in South Park, and you know it."

"Do I." Craig sips from his drink.

"Yeah, I think so, asshole. Why the hell else would you come to Hammerheads? Pretty risky, huh? But a safe place to talk to me, because none of these closeted homos are going to say shit about where they saw you."

Butters is sipping his drink, growing bored with Eric and Craig's posturing. Tweek is more interesting, trembling at Craig's feet like he's struggling not to engage in his usual incessant fidgeting, as if he's afraid Craig will backhand him if he starts tugging at his hair. Tweek keeps meeting Butters' unrelenting stare and then looking away, his mouth quirking.

"What?" Tweek finally shouts when Butters won't stop staring. Craig ignores this, in the midst of a debate about whether or not the incumbent mayor is Eric's puppet. Butters looks down at his drink, stirring the ice with the tiny straw.

"Nothing," Butters says. "I've just never seen you here before. And, um. Aren't you married to –"

"Yes, ah, God, don't say her name!" Tweek winces and puts his hands over his ears. "She thinks I'm asleep in my room! She'd cut my balls off if she knew I was here!"

"Your room?" Butters says. "You have separate bedrooms?" He thinks of his parents, a chilly feeling pooling in his belly and mixing uncomfortably with the burn of the alcohol.

"I can't sleep if there's a clock in the room, and she says she needs an alarm!" Tweek says. "That's – that's all."

"That's all?" Butters looks up at Craig. "Um."

"I can't help it, okay!" Tweek says. "You think I want to be here? It's humiliating – ah – everyone staring at me, it makes me want to – ah, I don't know, shit, it's too much!"

"I'm confused," Butters says. He finishes his drink and sets it clumsily on the table by the sofa, scooting closer to Tweek and tucking himself between Eric's legs in the process. Eric puts a hand in Butters' hair but otherwise ignores him, calling Craig a deluded ass master.

"You're confused?" Tweek says, throwing out his hands. "_You're_ confused? I'm confused, dude! Shit! I don't know what the hell I'm doing! I never did! He hypnotizes me – Jesus, don't pretend you can't relate! It's been going on since high school, just like you and him!"

"So why'd you marry Wendy?" Butters asks. He feels terrible for her, though he never pretended to understand her relationship with Tweek.

"Why do you think?" Tweek says. "Wouldn't you have married a chick if that meant your parents would still talk to you?"

Butters looks down at Eric's boot, poking it, not wanting to talk about that. He might have done something like that, something that his parents wanted, but he was caught when his parents saw him riding in Eric's car when he was supposed to be off at school in Virginia. After a lot of tense attempts to visit or call them and one horrible letter from his father wherein he threatened to sue Butters for a tuition reimbursement, Butters accepted that as long as he stayed with Eric, his relationship with his parents was over. It still hurts, and he didn't expect Tweek of all people to throw it in his face.

"Jesus, I'm sorry!" Tweek says, scooting closer and lowering his voice, which for Tweek doesn't mean much. "It's just – my parents are dead, okay? And they wouldn't want to see me like this! They'd want me to be with Wendy, and she's – she's normal! This shit isn't normal, man, it's fucking crazy!"

"So why do you do it?" Butters asks.

"I told you, he hypnotizes me! I think he has some kind of evil powers. Jesus, Cartman probably has the same thing! Look at what you're doing, for Christ's sake!"

Butters looks down at himself. He actually feels pretty mellow and comfortable for a visit to Hammerheads, his head swimming with vodka and peach schnapps as he sits between Eric's legs. His mouth waters a little when he thinks about how close he is to Eric's cock, and how he'll get to unwrap it like a Christmas present when they get home, because he's being a good boy, he must be. Eric only pets his hair like this when he's happy with him.

"Ah, God, why am I even talking to you, you're trashed!" Tweek puts his hands over his face. "I'm so fucked up – shit!"

"There's nothing wrong with you," Butters says, slurring a little. "You just like – certain things. You should tell Wendy. She doesn't deserve to be lied to."

"You can't tell her!" Tweek says, his eyes bugging out. "You have to promise! She'd – ah, fuck! She'd kill me for real!"

"No, she's wouldn't," Butters says. "Wendy's a nice girl. Woman, I mean." He winds his arm around Eric's leg, resting his cheek against it. "She'd be sad, sure, but she'd want you to tell her the truth."

"Please, Butters, I'm begging you, don't tell her!"

Butters is going to promise that he won't, because Tweek should tell her himself, but he notices that the conversation up on the sofa has stopped. Eric and Craig are staring down at them. Craig has his eyes narrowed at Butters, and his gaze is so cold and steely that Butters ducks down to hide half of his face behind Eric's leg.

"If your little errand boy says anything to Wendy about this, there will be consequences," Craig says.

"Really, you're going to threaten me?" Eric says. He's smiling like he finds that hilarious, but he looks deadly, too, canine teeth showing. "Right here, in my town?"

"It wasn't always your town," Craig says. "And you might have half the idiots here fooled into thinking you're something to be feared, but the other half are going to listen when I talk."

"Talk about what?" Eric says. He sighs and drinks from his beer. "Craig, I don't want to have you killed, but I think we both know I'll do it if I have to."

"No!" Tweek says, grabbing hold of Craig's leg. "Don't, please!"

Craig gives Tweek a long stare that must communicate something sharply, because Tweek releases his leg and scoots away from him, still huddled on the floor.

"As I was saying before I was interrupted," Craig says, turning back to Eric. "Half the people in this town are in your pocket, yes. You have my respect for that. But you're aware that I'm significantly wealthier than anyone in South Park, I think? Unless the government is paying the chief of police 3.4 million a year?"

"Oh, wow, Craig, we're all so impressed that you made the internet shitty for everyone," Eric says, rolling his eyes. "Did you get that 3.4 million directly from the devil, or did he give it to the penis enlargement pill companies first?"

"If you'll shut your fat mouth for two seconds you might realize that I didn't come here to waste my time insulting you," Craig says. "I have a proposition."

"Sorry, Craig, you're not my type."

"No shit," Craig says, his eyes narrowing just slightly. "Look at the selection of property on the floor right now. I think you'll see that we have very similar tastes. That's what I came here to demonstrate. I don't agree with all of your methods, and you might not agree with mine, but I think we could be a powerful combination. South Park could become a town that attracts actual enterprise, and your police chief salary could rise considerably."

Butters waits for Eric to break his beer bottle on Craig's face in retaliation for calling Butters _property_. Even if that's what he is, Craig shouldn't be allowed to say so. Eric just stares at Craig for awhile, as if he's actually thinking about partnering with him. Butters wants to scream _No_ the way Tweek did, because Craig can't be trusted and can't be up to any good. He stays quiet, his grip tightening on Eric's leg.

"Alright," Eric says. "I'm listening."

"Obviously, it begins with complete control of the government," Craig says. He unzips his pants, and Tweek sits up straighter at the sound, his eyes glued to Craig's crotch. "You don't mind if I give him his dinner while we talk, do you?" Craig asks, drawing Tweek to him. "He hasn't eaten all day."

"Uh," Eric says. Butters hasn't seen him blush in a long time. "I guess not."

They've seen stranger and more explicit things at Hammerheads over the years, but somehow this is the strangest, making Butters' cheeks burn red, too. Craig goes on talking about how they'll take control of the government, but Butters can't pay attention to what he's saying, and he would bet that Eric can't, either. Tweek is suddenly calm, no longer trembling as he gets up onto his knees to take Craig into his mouth. He sighs around Craig's dick like it really is a meal he's waited all day to eat, his head bobbing while Craig goes on talking like nothing is happening. Butters starts to get hard inside his shorts, watching this, and when he looks up he sees that Eric is, too. He wonders if he should do something about it, feeling too drunk to handle this properly, looking back and forth between Eric and Craig. Eric is watching Tweek while Craig talks, his lips slightly parted, the color still on his cheeks. Jealously, Butters reaches up between Eric's legs, hoping to recapture his attention. He does, but Eric's response is to glare at him and slap his hand away.

"Hey," Eric says, pointing a finger at Butters in warning. Butters shrinks back down between Eric's legs, dejected.

"People aren't excited about the election," Craig says, his breath coming more quickly now, eyelids slightly lowered. Tweek is still sucking him, taking him in deeper than should be possible, making Butters wonder how he does that. "But I have a plan for that," Craig says.

"A plan?" Eric seems dazed, still watching Tweek.

"What gets people excited about – ah. An election." Craig flips some of his dark hair off his forehead, letting out a deep breath. Butters sees his hips twitch just slightly.

"Scandal?" Eric says. He looks up at Craig, his attention reclaimed. "Don't tell me. You're going to come out of the closet."

"No," Craig says. "That was your strategy, and not a bad one, taking people off guard like that, but it's not going to work twice. I have something in mind. I'll keep the _deh_ – details to myself for now. Ah, excuse me for a second."

He bites his lip and closes his eyes, holding Tweek down onto him with both hands, his hips moving again, more erratically now. Craig lets his breath out while Tweek swallows his orgasm, and when he's recovered he looks down at Tweek, watching him suck him until he's dry. He pushes Tweek's head back, and Tweek comes away panting, spit trailing from his lip to the head of Craig's cock. He looks hypnotized, there's no other word for it, uncharacteristically calm and sleepy as he stares up at Craig.

"Anyway," Craig says, wiping some spit from the corner of Tweek's lips. "I've thought about it from several different angles, and I really think partnering is the only way we're going to accomplish anything real with this town. And we'll be in on the ground floor when I start bringing companies to town."

"Companies?" Eric looks up from Tweek, frowning. "What do companies want with South Park?"

"Cheaply built factories," Craig says. "Inexpensive labor." He's still touching Tweek's mouth, rubbing his swollen lips with his thumb, and Tweek is openly basking in the attention. Butters has never seen him smile like that, as if he might drift off to sleep any minute now.

"But won't factories just stink everything up?" Butters asks, looking up at Eric. "A-and pollute the water? And if they're built cheaply, the workers could get hurt –"

"He's cute," Craig says, giving Butters a smile that makes him feel like he's about to get his throat sliced open. Butters cowers, curling in closer to Eric. "We should make them kiss," Craig says.

"Huh?" Eric says.

"These two," Craig says. He knocks his knee into Tweek's shoulder and nods to Butters. "It'd be hot."

"Fuck off," Eric says, glowering at Craig. He closes his legs around Butters. "Nobody touches him but me. Put your dick away and quit looking at him."

"I'm not saying that _I_ would –"

"I said fuck off!" Eric says. "If you want to line my pockets by bringing factories here, fine, I'll sign the zoning permits, but you stay the hell away from my – property." Eric swallows hard, watching Craig like he's waiting for him to try something.

"Suit yourself," Craig says, shrugging and tucking his cock back into his pants. "But, as mayor, I would be the one signing the zoning permits."

"That's not how it works now."

"Well, I wouldn't be your puppet. I'd be your partner."

Butters stands up, unable to listen to anymore of this. He wobbles on his feet, steadying himself against Eric's knees.

"Where do you think you're going?" Eric asks.

"Bathroom," Butters says. He touches the leash, Eric still holding the other end of it. "I guess you have to come with me."

"I don't have to do shit," Eric says. He reaches up to unfasten the leash. "Go ahead. If anyone gives you a hard time for not wearing one, tell them to fuck themselves."

"But – Eric –" Butters looks around at the various men whose attention he's recaptured by standing up.

"You'll be fine," Eric says. "Everyone here knows what would happen to anybody who messed with you." He gives Craig a meaningful look, and Craig rolls his eyes. Tweek is back to looking agitated again, though only slightly, one of his hands pushed up inside Craig's pant leg, revealing a surprisingly colorful argyle sock.

Butters is unsteady as he walks toward the bathroom, tired and sad. For a moment, when Eric paused, Butters actually thought he might say, _stay the hell away from my family_, or maybe _my boyfriend_, even _my house husband_. More than any of those, he wanted Eric to say _my Butters_, and he feels like he'll cry when he walks into the bathroom, sighing when he sees that the stall is occupied by two people who sound like they're having sex. He goes to the urinals and unzips, hoping no one else will come in until he's done. It's hard enough to pee with people grunting and groaning to his immediate left.

When he's done he flushes and turns toward the sink, surprised to see a man standing there. Butters didn't hear anyone come in, and he thinks about leaving without washing his hands, just to avoid a potential come on. The man is older, wearing jeans and a tight t-shirt, and something about his conservative hair cut gives Butters chills. He realizes why when the man looks up from the sink and catches him staring.

It's his father.

The shock reaches him slowly, and he's eight years old again, in that house with too many doors, and his father – his mother – the car filling with water –

"Butters?" his father says, stricken. His face looks so freakish under the purplish light over the bathroom sinks that Butters has to hold in a scream. He runs from the bathroom, back to Eric, crashing into people, seeing nothing.

"Eric," he says when he reaches the couch, his vision tunneled and his mind whirling, the alcohol pooled hot and angry at the pit of his stomach, making him sick. Eric and Craig look up at him. Tweek is asleep at Craig's feet, his head resting on Craig's shoe.

"What's wrong?" Eric asks, standing. "Did someone touch your ass? I'll fucking kill the son of a–"

"We have to leave," Butters says. He's trying very hard not to cry, doesn't want to break down in front of Craig. "Now. Please, Eric, we have to leave now."

"Who fucked with you?" Eric asks, looking around in all directions. "I'm not leaving until –"

"Please," Butters says, the tears coming on fast. He sniffles and stands up on his tip toes, putting his lips to Eric's ear. "My dad," he whispers. "He's here. Please, we have to go."

"Oh – shit." Eric's face changes, and he puts his hand on the small of Butters' back. "Okay. Alright. C'mon."

"You're leaving?" Craig says.

"Yeah," Eric says, already leading Butters away. "I'll, uh, be in touch."

They get to the coat room quickly, and Butters is shaking hard as Eric drapes his pea coat around him. The prissy hat is forgotten in the shuffle, and Butters would be glad if he could think about anything except his abject terror at seeing his father like that, and being seen _like this_, and what his father must think, what he would do if Butters was still living at home. All he can hear as Eric ushers him to the car is his father's voice, dripping with disgust, ringing in his ears. _So much trouble, mister, grounded until you're dead, never going to trust you again, such a disappointment, just a little freak_.

"Hey, c'mon," Eric says, helping Butters into the passenger seat of the Hummer as sobs wrack his chest. "Don't – don't let that asshole get to you. I could, uh. You want me to arrest him?"

"For what?" Butters asks, crying hard.

"Shit, I don't know. I could make something up."

Butters shakes his head. "No, let's just go, please, Eric, I want to go home."

"Alright." Eric shuts the passenger side door and walks around to the driver's seat, gets in and starts the car. Butters leans down to hide his face against his knees, trying to stop crying. He knows Eric hates it when he cries, but he can't get the image of his father in that bathroom out of his head, and he can't breathe, can't handle this.

"Calm down," Eric says. He reaches over to rub Butters' shoulders. "We're almost home."

"I don't want you to go into business with Craig," Butters sobs, unable to control himself in any sense at the moment. "He's evil, Eric, he'll do something bad."

"Oh, Jesus, don't worry about that," Eric says. "I'm not stupid enough to fall for his bullshit. I just have to act like I am. Keep your enemies closer than your friends, Butters, remember that."

"I don't have any enemies," Butters says, sniffling. "Except maybe Craig."

"See? Anyway, he's nothing, he's a joke. He thinks I'm going to be impressed 'cause he can get Wendy's husband to suck his dick in public? Please."

"I would have done it for you," Butters says, still drunk, feeling dizzy. "T-to show I could do it better."

"Christ, Butters, of course you can do it better. Would I settle for anything less than the best little cocksucker in South Park? I don't have anything to prove to that asshole." He reaches over to rub Butters behind his ear when he sits up.

"I thought you were mad at me," Butters says, wiping his face clear. "When I, um, tried to –"

"I don't want you doing that shit in public," Eric says. "You're better than that."

"Eric?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I need to throw up." Butters' stomach is whining, lurching, and he can't get his eyes to focus, everything swaying like underwater plant life.

"Shit, okay," Eric says, pulling into their driveway. "Here we are. Just – don't puke in the car, try to hold it –"

Butters throws open the car door, watery vomit surging up his throat, and he stumbles out into the driveway, landing hard on all fours, getting sick in the snow. Eric curses and hurries to him, squatting down beside him.

"Okay," Eric says. "That's – goddamn, Butters, are you alright?"

"I think I'm done," Butters says, spit trailing from his bottom lip. He's crying again, embarrassed. Eric groans and picks him up, carrying him to the front door like he's a kid, Butters' cheek resting on Eric's shoulder, his legs wrapped around Eric's waist. Exhausted, Butters closes his eyes and listens to Eric unlock the door, turn off and reset the alarm. His stomach is still tender, but he feels hollow, spent.

"I should have given you more for dinner," Eric says as he carries Butters upstairs. Butters moans at the thought of food, the taste of regurgitated alcohol still rancid on his tongue. Eric puts the light on in the master bathroom but leaves the bedroom lights off, depositing Butters on the bed. Butters tries to crawl toward the pillows but Eric stops him, undressing him first. He brings Butters a thermal shirt and a soft pair of flannel shorts and helps him into them.

"Don't lie down yet," Eric says when Butters tries to again. "You've got to rinse your mouth out." He disappears and returns with a bottle of water and a glass from the bathroom, the ones Butters set there this morning so Eric could have a drink after brushing his teeth. Butters swishes the water around in his mouth and spits into the cup, moaning.

"That's good," Eric says. "You can lie down now."

"Eric?" Butters says. His lip trembles, his eyes growing wet again.

"Yeah?"

"Can – can I h-have a hug?"

"Oh, Jesus, Butters, c'mere."

Eric puts the glass and water bottle on the nightstand and climbs onto the bed, scooting back against the headboard. He pulls Butters into his lap and shushes him when he bursts into tears again. Butters holds onto Eric as hard as he can, clamping his legs around Eric's sides, his arms winding around Eric's neck. He knows he's asking for it, crying like this, but running into his father at Hammerheads must be an exception to Eric's usual rules, because he just holds Butters and lets him cry until the shoulder of Eric's shirt is soaking wet.

"M-my mom," Butters says when he can talk again. "She – she'd hurt me if she knew what he was doing. Like before."

"No, she fucking wouldn't. You think I can't protect you from an emotionally unstable middle-aged woman? What do you take me for?"

"Eric," Butters says, moaning and clinging to him. Eric sighs and rubs his back.

"You're just drunk," he says. "You'll feel better in the morning."

Butters is fairly sure that's not true. In the morning he'll have a headache and an unsettled stomach, and he'll still have the memory of what his father looked like in that bathroom, the horrified expression on his face when he saw Butters standing behind him. He lets Eric tuck him into bed, accepting Clyde Frog when he offers him.

"I guess you don't want sex anymore?" Eric says glumly.

"Oh, uh, you could – if you want," Butters says, sniffling. He rolls onto his side and hugs Clyde Frog to him. Eric rolls his eyes.

"Butters, if I wanted to have sex with someone who wasn't interested I'd go to an Asian massage parlor. I'll just – beat off in the shower. Be right back." He kisses Butters' cheek and disappears into the bathroom.

Butters closes his eyes and listens to the sound of the shower running in the bathroom. He curls up into a ball under the blankets, squeezing Clyde Frog closer. Something about seeing his father that way made him think of Kenny and the forgotten boys. Their parents didn't even remember them, according to Kenny. Butters wanted his father to look through him, or see him as a stranger, because he doesn't know him, not anymore, and maybe he never really did. When Eric returns to the bed he's warm and soap-scented, wearing sweatpants and an old SPPD t-shirt. Butters rolls against him, and Eric lets him cling, Clyde Frog pressed between them.

"Eric?" Butters whispers.

"What?"

"What if you forgot me? Like, like everyone forgot those boys –"

Eric groans. "Go to sleep," he says. "And stop listening to Kenny's crap. There's no such thing as magical memory erasing rays or whatever the fuck Kenny thinks happened, and there were never any goddamn disappearing boys. I'm going to forbid you from hanging out with that junkie if I keep having to hear about this."

"But – even if it's not true – what if you did? It's like I wouldn't even exist anymore. Nobody would know me, not the _real_ me, not like you do, and my parents have already forgot me –"

"Butters! You're drunk. Stop talking. Nobody's going to forget you. Least of all me, okay?"

"I'm not like Tweek, am I?" Butters asks, because he can't work up the nerve to ask Eric if he's really just property to him. Eric groans.

"No, Butters, you're not like Tweek. You're way hotter than that piece of garbage. Now go to sleep before I have to kick you out of bed, okay?"

Butters doesn't believe Eric would kick him out of bed, not tonight, but he's quiet anyway, tucking his face to Eric's chest and sniffling against his t-shirt. He has bad dreams about his parents, about Craig building factories that belch black smog into the sky, and about being forgotten, turning invisible. He wakes up whimpering and reaches for Eric, who usually doesn't indulge any interruptions in his sleep. He grumbles a little but pulls Butters to him, reaching down to rub his fingers over Butters' tattoo. Butters presses his face to Eric's neck, comforted by this, because if Eric did forget him, Butters would still have the tattoo, and he could offer it as proof that this is where he belongs.


	9. Chapter 9

Stan has always liked his job. He feels a real connection to nursing, helping people through awkward tests with a smile and parsing the doctor's medical speak for them, making the whole process less scary. It was between this and the priesthood back when he was deciding which sort of school to attend, and he picked nursing because as a nurse he could still get married and have a family like the ones he dreamed about when he paged through Pottery Barn catalogs as a kid. Back then, he was sure that he would grow up to have a pretty wife and a whole baseball team worth of adoring children, and that they would have a summer house on the cape that would require tasteful but cozy outdoor furnishings and rustic-looking ice buckets for their wine, a little pair of lobster claw crackers for everyone. He never imagined that he would find the kind of domestic bliss he'd dreamed about with an agoraphobic, atheist amnesiac who also happens to be a man, and not even an American citizen, but that's who he's anxious to get home to every day now, staring at the clock when he should be organizing his patients' check-in forms.

"Why are you so distracted lately?" Carol asks as she watches Stan dig out the Jill Rosenthal paperwork, which he'd mistakenly filed under Hampton, Brianna. They have a similar hair cut.

"I'm not," Stan says. He doesn't want Carol or Dr. Harper finding out that he's living with a man, because then they'll assume that he's gay, and he's not, even though he wakes up every morning wanting to roll on top of Kyle and make him pregnant with twins. That's not possible, and Stan wouldn't know how to fuck even if Kyle did have a uterus, so there's no point in engaging in the kind of clueless humping that would make it obvious that Stan knows about gay sex only through bad porn. He'd disappoint Kyle, who's had them all over the world and would probably decide that Spencer was right about Stan being some kind of latent serial killer if he found out Stan has managed to remain a virgin at the age of twenty-six.

"You've got a girlfriend, don't you?" Carol asks later, when she catches Stan smiling at the clock toward the end of the day.

"No," Stan says, making his face serious and looking back to the paperwork.

"Yes, you do!" Carol laughs and claps her hands. "Look at you! Look how hard you're blushing! Oh, Stan, you can tell me! I was beginning to wonder, you know, with you being so handsome and all. You don't even have any pictures on your desk."

Stan's desk is more of a desk _area_ than an actual desk, since he shares it with Carol and Dr. Harper's diplomas are hanging over it, not Stan's. He blushes harder, thinking of taking a picture of Kyle and putting it in a little gold frame, placing it beside his pencil cup. Kyle has been living with him for three weeks now, and Stan accepted somewhere around day two that he wants Kyle to stay with him forever, but he still doesn't know how to make whatever they are to each other into the kind of thing that will allow him to bring pictures of Kyle into work. He does like the idea, and gets wistful staring at the empty place on his desk where the picture might sit, imagining the embarrassed little smile Kyle would have on his face.

"Oh, my God, you're mooning!" Carol says, her usually throaty voice approaching a squeak. She squeezes Stan's shoulders, giggling in a way that worries him. "Tell me about her! I bet she's beautiful."

"Yeah," Stan says, unable to stop himself, because he does want to brag, even if he has to switch pronouns. "She's totally gorgeous. She's got these eyes, green eyes – I can't believe she ever even gave me the time of day."

"Green eyes, huh?" Carol says. She's beaming, pulling a desk chair over beside Stan's. "And?"

"Um," Stan says, playing with a pen. "Well, she has red hair –"

"Ooh! Is she a firecracker?"

Carol is beginning to freak Stan out. She's divorced, and as far as he knows she's not dating anyone, so maybe she just wants to live vicariously through a younger person. He considers her question and nods.

"Yeah, she's pretty fiery," he says, smiling to himself when he thinks of Kyle getting worked up over particularly villainous or insincere contestants on reality shows, which Stan has gotten him hooked on. "And really, really smart. An awesome cook, too, she's introduced me to all this stuff I'd never heard of before. Did you know there's an Asian market on Moreland Avenue?"

"She's Asian?" Carol says, rearing back a bit, as if trying to picture a red-haired Asian girl.

"No," Stan says. "American. But she grew up in London. I could listen to her talk about that for hours, you know, all the stuff that's different over there? I mean, I guess I knew the big things, like tea and crumpets and all that junk, but, like – have you ever heard of Boxing Day?"

"Sounds kind of familiar," Carol says. "I thought that was an Australian thing?"

"I think they have it there, too? Oh, and he_h_, um, _here's_ something great, too – she's been to all these places, like, traveled? Even though she's afraid of flying? Because her parents have money, and they're, like, these famous psychoanalysts, practically, and they go to conferences all over the world, so she's been to like China and everything, but she didn't really like it because she – ah."

Kyle didn't like China, or Australia, or Germany, because he was on display at all of the conferences he attended. This wasn't done in any official capacity, but he was paraded out as an example of this or that at gatherings that his parents attended, brought to the sort of cocktail parties where he would eventually be left unsupervised to 'seduce' men who were much too old for him. Stan doesn't believe that Kyle actually did the seducing, especially since Kyle broke down crying and begged Stan not to hate him for being a slut when they talked about this, and anyway, what the hell is he doing almost telling Carol about any of this?

"She didn't like China—?" Carol says, raising her eyebrows and waiting for Stan to continue.

"Um, no, 'cause." Stan fumbles the pen and hurries to retrieve it. "She doesn't like, uh. Rice."

"Oh." Carol frowns, then reaches over to touch Stan's wrist, her face softening. "Well, I'm really happy for you, Stanley. Me and the doc were worried about you. We thought you seemed lonely."

"I was," Stan says, and he blushes harder, turning back to his paperwork. "Anyway, um. I'd better get this in order before I leave."

He tries to concentrate on alphabetizing and chronological order, but his foot is bouncing under his desk, and he's chewing on his lip, wondering what sort of culinary adventure Kyle will have worked up for him during the day. Kyle has been keeping himself busy with cooking and baking, and it's not unusual for Stan to come home to the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg, rolls and pastries cooling on the wire racks that Kyle bought from the specialty store they raided for kitchen supplies on their first proper weekend together. Kyle's parents have since canceled his credit cards, apparently not willing to fund another fifteen hundred dollar shopping spree, but Kyle must have anticipated this, because he cleared the place out and hasn't needed to go back yet. Stan was actually relieved when Kyle's parents stepped out of the financial picture, and he doesn't mind being the one who pays for whatever Kyle needs for his recipes from now on. His cinnamon buns are well worth it, and Stan likes making him happy.

At two minutes to five, Stan logs out of his computer and races for his car, pretending not to hear Carol when she asks if he's ordered swabs yet. She's supposed to be in charge of supplies, anyway. Outside, the sky is already darkening, and Stan feels an exhilarating surge of anxiety as he climbs into his car. It's so hard to be away from Kyle, and something about the process of getting back to him makes Stan nervous and excited, like he's got a time limit and Kyle might disappear if he doesn't hurry. By the time he's jogging up the stairs to his apartment, he's got to make himself stop and calm down for a minute. He can get too worked up sometimes, and he's gotten very close to breaking his no-deep-kisses rule, almost allowing himself to pin Kyle to the wall, tip his head back and push his tongue between those soft, warm, perfect lips.

The problem is, Stan doesn't know what he would do after that. He probably wouldn't even do the tongue-pushing-in part right. He's kissed before, but he was drunk and disinterested, and pretty sure that his partners didn't enjoy it much. Kyle deserves only expertly given, toe-curling kisses, and Stan doesn't know how to give them, so he kisses Kyle with dry, closed lips, telling himself that it's a brotherly gesture. Stan is virginal and ridiculous enough to look forward to this, anyway. He allows himself three kisses per day: one when he leaves for work in the morning, one when he gets home from work, and one before bed. That's the most dangerous one, and Stan is always careful to do it before they get into bed together, where he keeps his erections well clear of Kyle's thighs, even if Kyle rubs his against Stan's stomach needfully after too many drinks, hooking his leg around Stan's side for traction.

"Smells good in here," Stan says when he comes through the door. Kyle is stretched out on the sofa, reading one of the cheesy mystery novels that Stan was embarrassed about when Kyle first started examining them on his single bookshelf. Kyle puts the book down and pops up from the sofa, smiling sweetly as he bounds over to Stan for his kiss. He stops and stands still, arms at his sides, his chin tilted up a bit. Stan grins and puts one hand on Kyle's waist, drawing him closer. He cups Kyle's face with his other hand, his heart slamming and his cock filling with blood as he presses his lips to Kyle's. Kyle smells better than whatever's cooking, dusted with spices and so warm in Stan's hands. He licks at Stan's bottom lip, just softly. It's trick he's been trying recently, and Stan's cock throbs with pressure when he does it, every time, so full. He keeps his own lips closed and pulls back, his face hot.

"Um, so, what are you cooking?" Stan asks. Kyle looks disappointed for a moment, and it breaks Stan's heart, but he'd be much more disappointed to learn that chaste kisses like that are all Stan knows how to give.

"It's just a curry," Kyle says. He's still lingering close, his hands resting on Stan's chest. "How was work?"

"It was fine. Long." Stan thinks about kissing him again, just a quick one, maybe on his cheek. Kyle looks so cute, wearing one of Stan's baggy sweaters and staring up at him with a pleading expression that makes Stan want to weep. Stan walks into the kitchen before he can do anything crazy. "You want a beer?" he asks, pulling open the fridge. He's still got his coat on, for the purposes of hiding his persisting hardon.

"No thanks," Kyle says as Stan pops open a can of Coors Light for himself. "I've already got a drink." He nods to a melting gin and tonic on the coffee table by the sofa. The novelty of Coors Light wore off by Kyle's second week here, and he seems to like the harder stuff, anyway. Stan is worried that Kyle is drinking instead of taking his meds, but he doesn't seem out of control, just a little overly enthusiastic when it comes to evening cocktails. Stan walks over to the pot of tasty-smelling stuff that's simmering on the stove, bending down to sniff it. He coughs a little, something spicy stinging his nose, and Kyle laughs.

"I think you'll like this," Kyle says. "It was my favorite when I was in high school. There was this tiny hole in the wall place where I would get this after school, with really good bread and this very delicate rice. I spent years trying to figure out the recipe after I moved to America – I think this is as close as I'm going to get without being reincarnated as an Indian." Kyle takes a spoonful and feeds Stan a little taste after blowing on it. It's good, loaded with flavors that Stan couldn't possibly name, and he's smiling, thinking of Kyle as a high schooler, even skinnier than he is now, which is considerably less skinny than he was before he moved in with Stan, some padding on his waist and shoulders now, his cheeks a little fuller.

"What?" Kyle asks, smiling back. "My curry amuses you?"

"No. Just trying to picture you eating this stuff after school when you were a kid." Stan wants to kiss him again, but that's almost always true. "I bet you were so cute."

Kyle snorts. "I had blue hair for awhile," he says.

"That's evil," Stan says, reaching up to touch Kyle's curls. "This should not be fucked with."

"This?"

"Your hair color. Everything about your hair."

"Oh, Christ!" Kyle is smiling hard, swooning a little, though he seems only mildly drunk. "Where were you when I was fourteen?"

The question wounds Stan, though he keeps smiling. Where was he when Kyle was fourteen? Too far away. He feels guilty about that now, as if he should have known that Kyle was alone somewhere, needing him. He drinks some Coors Light before he can start kissing Kyle's face the way he always wants to, with abject worship, leading toward nothing in particular.

They eat out of their laps in front of the TV, as usual. The curry is good, spicy but not too intense, and Stan eats two big bowls of it with rice. Kyle does, too, sipping gin between bites and talking over two TV shows. Stan doesn't mind; he'd rather listen to Kyle, especially when he gets worked up about how Stan's favorite characters and contestants are getting treated unfairly.

"Maybe I'm not strictly an atheist," Kyle says, drunk after dinner and cuddled against Stan's chest. Stan doesn't have any restrictions on cuddling, except that his boners can't get involved. He doesn't have one now, a little drunk himself, playing with Kyle's hair while he talks.

"You believe in reincarnation or something?" Stan asks, remembering his earlier comment.

"No," Kyle says. "I wish I could, but – no. I mean that I believe in _justice_. Fairness. Which is a pretty big leap of faith when you really think about it."

"Sure," Stan says. "I believe in that stuff, too."

Kyle tips his head back to grin at him. He touches Stan between his eyes and runs his finger down to the tip of his nose.

"You are the cutest fucking thing," Kyle says, slurring.

"I'm serious, though," Stan says, offended. Sometimes he thinks Kyle is just enjoying being around someone who's dumber than him after having been hounded by intellectuals his whole life. "That's important to me, being fair."

"No, I'm sure it is," Kyle says. He rests his head on Stan's shoulder again, staring at the TV. "It just doesn't surprise me that you could have faith in something that other people would have trouble with. You're so, I don't know. At peace with the world."

"I guess that's true," Stan says, still feeling overly slow.

"It's true," Kyle says. "And it's catching. You know what I thought about all morning?"

"What?"

"How we should take a trip together. Maybe to New Mexico. You could show me where you grew up."

"Yeah." Stan hugs Kyle closer, thinking of him in the desert, the opportunity to rub sunscreen on his untested skin. "That'd be awesome."

"See? You know what this means?"

"Um?"

"I'm thinking about the future! I'm making plans! Stan, listen – even planning a recipe and shopping for it is a big deal for me." Kyle is grinning hard, sitting up in the circle of Stan's arms. He leans forward and Stan freezes, afraid Kyle will try to kiss him for real. Kyle must see this, because he drops his gaze to Stan's shirt and plays with his collar. "Anyway," Kyle says. "My mom was saying she doesn't think this is progress. But, I mean. It is."

"I think you're doing great," Stan says, wanting this to mean something to Kyle. It must, because he relaxes against Stan and slides his leg across Stan's lap. This is the portion of the evening when Stan has to be most vigilant, though it's usually not too difficult. He's much more attracted to Kyle when he's sober.

"That's the thing about thinking about the future," Kyle says. "It's only easy in small doses."

"What do you mean?"

"I am doing great, it's true," Kyle says. "I wake up feeling calm instead of panicked, I sleep through the night, and if I have that dream, you're there. And I don't mean in bed. I mean you're in the dream, with me, and I'm not scared at all."

"Good," Stan says. "That's what I want."

"Do you have dreams?" Kyle asks.

"Hardly ever." He thinks he does have them, but he never remembers them.

"Oh. Anyway, yeah, I'm doing great. But that's all I'm doing. And for how long? It's not fair that you have to work all day to support me."

"It is fair," Stan says. "You cook for me. You make the bed, too." Sloppily, but his efforts are adorable. "And, I don't know. You make me happy."

"Do I?" Kyle says. He presses himself against Stan's side, the beginning of his nightly erection asking him another question: _Can I make you feel good, too?_ Stan wants that, has waking dreams about it, but doesn't want Kyle to feel like it's something he owes him, and doesn't want to take pleasure from Kyle if he won't be able to give it back, too.

"Hey," Stan says, taking Kyle's chin in his hand. "You make me so happy. My life is so – I don't even know how I was getting through the days before. What I was living for. Except, you know."

"Except?"

"Except that I was waiting for you."

Kyle kisses him, and Stan allows it, because this could count as their goodnight kiss. He lets Kyle lick him, trying to get his lips to part, and pushes Kyle back gently when he whines at Stan's resistance.

"Let's go to bed," Stan says, his face flushed, dick hard. Kyle opens his mouth like he's going to protest or ask why, then he seems to think better of it, patting Stan's chest.

"Right," Kyle says, softly.

Stan's heart is pounding as he brushes his teeth. He knows he can't keep this up forever, and he knows he's going to dream about Kyle's mouth tonight, even if he won't remember it. Kyle's lips have become the focal point of Stan's universe, and he wants to believe that he could at least kiss Kyle to his satisfaction, but he'd need practice first, and in the meantime Kyle would figure out what Stan is: an overgrown child, inexperienced to the point of freakishness.

They climb into bed together and gravitate toward the middle. Kyle seems upset, and he turns away from Stan. It's not unusual for him to be petulant at bedtime, after getting rebuffed on the sofa or in the doorway of the bathroom. Stan scoots up behind Kyle and closes his arms around him, tugging Kyle against his chest. Kyle makes an irritable noise and sighs, but eventually he gives in, pressing back until his ass is snug against Stan's lap. Stan has to spell _Jesus Christ_ backwards in his head to keep from getting hard again, an old trick he invented when he was getting unwanted boners during class.

"I've been thinking," Kyle says after they've both been lying there in silence for awhile, Stan's heart still beating fast.

"Yeah?"

"I love living here, but I need some kind of closure if I'm really going to make a life here," Kyle says.

"That sounds reasonable."

"And I think the closure needs to involve my parents."

"Okay." Stan is always afraid to broach this subject, though he does agree that Kyle needs to talk about it. He hasn't been speaking to his parents since he moved in with Stan, but they're obviously still on his mind. He's always commenting on things with his mother's hypothetical reaction.

Kyle rolls over in Stan's arms and looks up at him. Stan moves his lap away from Kyle's hip, his cock stirring just from the pleading way Kyle looks at him, and the way his lips part slowly before he speaks.

"I think I need to go home," Kyle says.

"No," Stan blurts before he can stop himself. "I mean, I don't think –"

"I'd want you to come with me," Kyle says. He reaches up to cup Stan's cheek, stroking him softly with the pads of his fingers. Stan's cock responds instantly, and he needs to get his shit together, because what Kyle is proposing is serious.

"Me – come with you?" Even the word _come_ is dangerous right now. Stan hasn't been able to beat off in any satisfactory sense in the past three weeks. He gets it over with quick and quiet in the shower, thinking about Kyle.

"Yeah," Kyle says. "I want my parents to meet you. I think if they saw me with you, the way I am, they'd understand. And they'd love you." He doesn't exactly look certain about this, his eyes shifting away from Stan's for a moment. "And there's another thing," he says.

"Another thing?" Stan is so afraid, all the time, that Kyle will leave him. This feels like it could be the beginning of some sort of protracted farewell, and he's panicked at the thought that Kyle could go away, leaving him with a bunch of high end kitchen equipment and a permanent hole in his chest.

"My friend Christophe," Kyle says. "I really need to speak with him, and I haven't been able to get in touch with him. He does this sometimes, unplugs his phone because he can't deal with the outside world, but my father says he hasn't shown up for appointments, either, and I'm really worried about him. I want to go see him, and thank him for helping me find you."

"Oh," Stan says, his concern increasing. Maybe Kyle was only trying to placate him by saying that he didn't have feelings for this Christophe person. He brings him up frequently, always smiling a little when he tells stories about him.

"Do you think you could get the time off of work?" Kyle asks.

"I don't know," Stan says, and Kyle's face falls. "I mean, but – if it's important to you –"

"It's really important," Kyle says. "I feel like it's a test I need to pass, you know? Like you won't be a real part of my life until you've faced my parents. Is that fucked up?"

"No?" Stan has no idea; he's never had parents, at least not any that he remembers. "It – it makes sense," he says. "Just let me talk to Carol and Dr. Harper tomorrow. I bet I could work something out. We'd have to do it pretty soon, though. Carol's going to be out for a week at Christmas."

"Soon is good," Kyle says, nodding. "I feel like I need to do it soon. For Christophe as much as anything. I have a bad feeling." He pulls at his bottom lip, his gaze sinking away from Stan's.

"You think he's unwell?" Stan asks. He tries to picture Christophe: strapping and French, appealingly demented, a chain smoker. In his mind, the guy is somewhere between Gaston from _Beauty and the Beast_ and Leon the Cleaner.

"He's always fairly unwell," Kyle says. "Like me."

"You're fine," Stan says, annoyed. "I mean, not that I'd know. But you seem fine."

"What if I'm just faking it?" Kyle says. He looks up at Stan, his eyebrows arching. "What if I'm only fooling myself that I'm okay? I'm so isolated until you come home, and then all I can think about –" He stops there, and Stan can feel the temperature of Kyle's skin rising under the blankets, or maybe that's his own.

"I'm sorry you feel isolated," Stan says. He scoots down so that his face is level with Kyle's, which is dangerous, because Stan doesn't need him to finish that sentence. He knows all Kyle can think about is kissing him, that he wants it, too, but it's only because he doesn't know Stan's secret. For some reason he seems to be under the impression that Stan would be good at it.

"It's not your fault," Kyle says. He strokes Stan's face again, and doing so seems to calm him. It certainly calms Stan. "You've been so sweet to me." There's something accusatory in the word _sweet_, as if Kyle knows what Stan is holding back, all the filthy, dirty, not-sweet things that he doesn't know how to do, but maybe Stan is just being insecure.

"I think we should do it," Stan says. "The trip. I think you're right, it'll make you feel better. You'll see – you can be around them and still feel good."

"As long as you're there," Kyle says hurriedly.

"I'll be there." Stan rubs his fingers through Kyle's hair, wondering if Christophe will be there, too, at the dinner table, making cutting comments in French. Kyle moans and hides his face against Stan's chest, slowly going softer in his arms, giving in to sleep. Before he can go under completely he pushes one of his legs through Stan's. Stan allows it, even as Kyle's thigh moves higher, higher, dangerously close to his cock. Stan clamps his legs around Kyle's thigh to stop its progress, and Kyle laughs under his breath, then falls asleep.

The following day, Stan starts making arrangements. He already has a passport, from a mission trip he took to Honduras when he was eighteen, a sort of high school graduation present slash assignment from the priest who administered his group home. He's able to get the second week of December off, and Dr. Harper and Carol actually seem excited to hear that he's planning a vacation for the first time since he started at the office three years ago.

"He's got a girlfriend," Carol says when they're discussing this in the break room.

"I should have known," Dr. Harper says, nodding down to Stan's lunch, which is cold pork tenderloin with a port and fig sauce, and pasta salad with roasted cherry tomatoes on the side. "No more ham and cheese for you, huh, buddy?"

Stan really hates it when Dr. Harper calls him buddy, as if Stan is his hapless golden retriever. He looks down at his lunch, thinking of the note Kyle packed with it, which he was able to tuck into his pocket before these two saw it: _Have a good day at work, and don't fall in love with any patients!_

"She's a red head!" Carol says. Stan gives her a look. Dr. Harper whistles.

"Got a picture?" he asks.

"Not yet," Stan says, coloring. "I keep meaning to take one."

"Too busy with other things," Carol says. Stan glowers at her, and she winks.

"Uh-oh!" Dr. Harper says. He laughs. "I remember those days. Young love!" The guy is only thirty-one. "Well, Stan, you take that trip with your girl and have yourself a great time. London, you said?"

"Yeah. Her parents live there."

"Uh-ohh!" Dr. Harper says, and he and Carol share a look that makes Stan want to flip the table over and spill the various lunches upon it onto both of them. "I remember _those_ days, too."

When Stan gets home, Kyle is pulling flatbread with fontina and black olives from the oven. Stan eats some over it right over the stove, dipping it in a marinara sauce that Kyle made yesterday.

"So, good news," he says as Kyle hugs him from behind, winding his arms around Stan's chest and standing on tip-toes to rest his chin on Stan's shoulder. "I got the okay to take next week off of work. Short notice, but still – they were just glad to hear I was interacting with another human being for once." He shouldn't have said that part, but Kyle laughs and squeezes him.

"I'll book the plane tickets, then," Kyle says. "After I call my mother and tell her I'm making a trip home, I'm sure she'll foot the bill. First class, maybe."

"She doesn't need to pay that much," Stan says, fretting about this woman's opinion of him already. She almost definitely thinks he's insane, and probably dangerous. He doesn't need her thinking he's a freeloader, too. "In fact, hey. Let me pay. I've got some money saved up." 

"No, no, it's my trip," Kyle says. "My idea, I mean. God, I must be drunk, I'm not even shaking at the thought of calling her. Should I do it now?"

"Sooner the better," Stan says, though he's not looking forward to listening to Kyle's half of the conversation as his mother wears him down, convincing him that he should be rocking in a corner until he actually is rocking in a corner, Stan wrapped around him.

Stan drinks a beer while Kyle slips into the bedroom to call his mother. The conversation is quiet, though Stan occasionally hears Kyle's voice raise a pitch or two, still soft enough that he can't make out the words from behind the closed bedroom door. He tries to imagine himself in London, staring down two therapists who consider him the near-kidnapper of their troubled son. It will be his ultimate test, like the ones he tried so hard to pass while he was still living in the group home: auditioning to be part of a family and starting out with the serious disadvantage of being unable to explain who he is and where he came from.

"How'd it go?" Stan asks when Kyle emerges from the bedroom. Kyle looks pensive but not upset, his phone clutched in his hand.

"She's happy to hear I'm coming home," Kyle says. He stands near the couch like he's not sure where he should go next, if he should sit or return to the kitchen. "And she was happy to hear that you'll be coming, too. She's very curious, obviously."

"Obviously," Stan says, though he would bet 'curious' isn't the right word.

"I asked if they'd heard from Christophe and they said they hadn't." Kyle sighs. "My mom says I'm being ridiculous. He's disappeared for months before, and he never bothers to explain where he's gone when he turns up again. It's just the way he is, but I still have a bad feeling."

"C'mere," Stan says. Kyle lifts his eyes to Stan's, looking lost for a moment, then coy.

"Here?" he says. Stan spreads his legs and pats his lap. Kyle grins.

"Dinner is only half finished," he says. He's been doing this lately, teasing Stan. He doesn't rub his erections against Stan in bed anymore, and doesn't come running for his kiss as soon as Stan is through the door. He makes Stan come and get it. Stan hopes it's just Kyle getting fed up with him, could completely understand that, and hopes that it's nothing to do with the fact that they'll soon be headed into Kyle's world, where Stan will be the one who wants to rock in corners when people scrutinize him.

"Come here," Stan says, more forcefully. Kyle swallows, his own eyes widening slightly as he moves toward Stan. He sinks into his lap and wets his lips. They haven't had their home-from-work kiss yet. Stan tugs Kyle forward to give it to him, and even parts his lips a bit, enough to make Kyle start licking at him hungrily. It's so good, but rapidly terrifying, and Stan pulls back. Kyle hovers over him, panting, the haze of arousal in his eyes hardening into annoyance.

"You're so weird," he says, muttering. He climbs out of Stan's lap and heads back into the kitchen.

"Sorry," Stan says, still dizzy from that time-stopping moment when Kyle's tongue pushed at the tiny space between Stan's lips, trying to find Stan's tongue, nearly succeeding.

"No, I know," Kyle says. He groans and fixes himself another drink. "Priests, and everything. Are you sure they didn't – ah? 'Cause you could tell me, I mean, if you wanted to talk about it–"

"They didn't," Stan says, offended, though he supposes Kyle has to try to explain Stan to himself somehow.

"Well, fine. You take all the time to need to figure out what you are." Kyle's tone is sharp; Stan can hear the gin in it. Kyle drinks from his glass, slurping up a half-melted ice cube. "It's just, you keep kissing me," he says, the ice cube clicking over his teeth.

"I like kissing you," Stan says, feeling pathetic. Kyle's face softens. He sighs and drinks more.

"Yeah, I gathered that," he says.

They're quiet during dinner, with is pasta with onions and pancetta – bacon, as far as Stan is concerned – served with more marinara sauce. Between two helpings of pasta and the flat bread, Stan is stuffed after dinner, marooned on the couch and waiting for Kyle to crawl onto him and make himself comfortable. He doesn't, just sits staring at the television, one of his knees pulled to his chest.

"So, do you have any tips?" Stan asks, feeling anxious. "For meeting your parents?"

"Oh, God." Kyle examines his nails. "Just – don't let them trap you. My mother in particular."

"Trap me?" Stan imagines himself cornered in some grand English manor, a net falling over his head.

"She'll get you talking in this pretend friendly way," Kyle says. "But she's really trying to force you to admit something."

"Like what?"

"Like –" Kyle thinks for a moment. "Like that you only think you know you want, and that you actually don't have any clue, or that you really want something else entirely."

"I know what I want," Stan says. He moves over toward Kyle, slipping an arm around him. Kyle puts his head on Stan's shoulder.

"She'll try to talk you about of that," Kyle says, mumbling.

"Well, let's see her try. Spencer tried, too –"

"Spencer is a clown compared to my mother!" Kyle says, popping up again. "You've got no idea – she's very intelligent."

"She's going to think I'm stupid, right?" Stan says. "Or she'll be able to tell, I guess, since I am."

"Oh, please! Don't be like that. You're just as intelligent as she is, you're just too secure with yourself to need to badger other people with your intellect. But don't bother engaging her in a debate if she's being condescending. She once made Edward Ishak cry."

"Who's that?"

"One of her detractors, this infamous hard ass in the pediatric psychiatry circles – and actually he didn't cry so much as throw a tea saucer against a wall, but she felt confident that he went home and wept."

Stan blinks a few times. He's already in over his head, unable to imagine co-existing with Kyle in this world. Kyle must see it on his face, because he leans against Stan again, hugging him.

"Fuck all of them, anyway," Kyle says. "The whole point of this is for me to face all of this nonsense and realize how inane it is compared to you."

"What's so great about me?" Stan asks. "I won't even – I can't even –"

"You're the safe side of the lake," Kyle says, lifting his head.

"The frozen lake?"

"Kyle's frozen lake," Kyle says. He drops his gaze to Stan's sweater and picks off the little balls of pilled wool, flicking them away. "That's what my mother calls it. But it's not mine, it's ours, somehow, and I feel like I've conquered it when I'm with you. Like we've conquered it."

Stan hugs Kyle tightly, pretending to understand what he's talking about. He almost wishes he could have this dream himself. It feels like a place he needs to go, somewhere they agreed to meet.

The week before the trip is tense; Stan has to stay late at work to make up for the paperwork organizing that he's been slacking off on, and Kyle becomes alarmingly inventive with his dinners. One night, Stan comes home after eight o'clock to find Kyle pounding octopus tentacles through plastic wrap.

"It's for a stew," Kyle says, sort of breathless as Stan stares. The bottle of gin Stan brought home yesterday is already at half-mast. "You'll like it," Kyle says sharply, and starts beating the tentacles again. They don't have a home-from-work kiss that night, and Stan has to roll Kyle onto his back in bed to give him his goodnight kiss. Kyle stares up at him blankly, maybe just drunk and half asleep, but there's a moment where Stan fears he'll say something like, _Why bother?_ Instead, Kyle sighs and rolls over again, allowing Stan to cuddle him behind him. Stan can't sleep, too distracted by his worry about the way Kyle is acting, and the trip, the relation between the two. He rubs his fingers over Kyle's arm just lightly, disturbing his strawberry blond arm hair until Kyle shivers.

"Want me to stop?" Stan whispers, afraid he's only making things worse, because Kyle is trying to sleep.

"Feels good," Kyle says, mumbling this into the pillow. Bolstered by this, Stan continues to tickle his fingers up and down over Kyle's arm, and he ducks his head to press little kisses to the back of Kyle's neck. Kyle sighs and pushes back, and they both go still when his ass slides against Stan's erection. Stan wasn't being careful enough. He's frozen, his lips puckered just over Kyle's neck.

"Sorry," Stan says, his voice pinched. He moves his hips backward, away from Kyle's ass. Kyle sighs deeply and buries his face in the pillow.

"No problem," he says. "I'll just dream about you fucking me with it."

Stan's inability to react to this comment only proves what he's been afraid of: he can't handle an actual sexual relationship, feels like he's been tossed into the air and all he can hope to do is not flail too embarrassingly. He moves away from Kyle and lies on his back, staring at the ceiling. All this time, when Kyle has tossed off comments about how he's broken, how he's never well, Stan thought he was getting defensive on Kyle's behalf, but he was really trying to refute those things about himself, in his own mind. He is broken, and Kyle knows it now.

"Hey," Kyle says, startling Stan, who thought he was asleep, or at least effectively passed out after all that gin. Kyle turns to Stan and sits up on his elbow, looking down at him. Stan tries not to cry when Kyle strokes his cheek apologetically, but the best he can do is blinking tears back in, his eyes burning from the weight of them.

"I'm sorry," Stan says. "I don't know –"

"You don't have to know," Kyle says before he can finish. He leans in to kiss Stan's face, but stops short, searching Stan's eyes to find out if this is what he wants. Stan doesn't know what he wants. His dick is still hard, but he's sniffling, wiping tears.

"Do you love this guy?" Stan asks, because he needs to know before he travels to another country to find out. Kyle frowns.

"What guy?" Kyle asks. "You? Yes."

"Me – not me." Stan laughs anxiously. He loves Kyle, too, and he has for awhile now. "This other guy. The one we're going to London for. Chris_tophe_."

Kyle's smile comes slowly. "It is a stupid name, I know," he says. "He hates it, too, but he hates 'Chris' more. And I'm not in love with him. He's sort of asexual? And not even in the traditional sense. You'll understand when you meet him. And I'm in love with you, by the way, did you catch that?"

"Why?" Stan asks, sobbing the word out.

"Because you're messed up like me," Kyle says. "But not like me – in this other way that makes me feel like I am the way I am for a reason. Because the way I am fits with the way you are. You know?"

"Yeah." Stan wipes his right eye while Kyle dries his left. "I love you, too. I want to give you everything," he says, hoping Kyle will understand what he means.

"I don't need everything," Kyle says, though he looks sort of sad saying so, resigned. He kisses the end of Stan's nose. "I just need you, just the way you are. I'm sorry I said that – before. I was being an asshole."

"No, you weren't. I want – I should –"

"There is no 'should' when it comes to this kind of thing," Kyle says. He rests his head against Stan's chest and rubs his hand down to Stan's belly, dangerously close to his cock, but that doesn't seem to be what Kyle is looking for. "We'll figure it out. I don't mean to rush you."

"You don't understand," Stan says, because he knows what he wants, has figured that out: he wants to be on Kyle, and inside him, all over him, all the time. The problem is stage fright, something no amount of covertly reading gay sex guides on his computer at work can fix.

"So tell me," Kyle says, and Stan gets the feeling he's still waiting to hear that Stan was molested by a priest. He sighs and tucks his arm around Kyle.

"I bet I know everything about you," Stan says. "Everything that you know, anyway. You've told me so much. You're so brave."

"When your parents publish a book about your bed wetting problem when you're twelve years old, you learn to stop trying to have secrets," Kyle says.

"Nobody published any books about me," Stan says.

"Lucky you. Look, I don't believe that spilling your guts about what's bothering you is necessarily going to help. It only made me fixate on my insecurities even more. But you can tell me anything, Stan, whenever you want to. I'm not going to judge you – Christ, you know I've got no right to. Wake me up in the middle of the night if you need to talk. It's not like I have a job I have to get up early for."

Stan lets out a shuddering breath and tries to picture saying it out loud: _Kyle, I'm a virgin. I've never even touched boobs, let alone another guy's dick_. The blood rapidly drains from his cock, and he keeps his mouth shut. Kyle drifts off to sleep on Stan's chest, and Stan stays up for most of the night, though he's the one who does have a job to get up early for.

On the day before their trip to London, Stan gets home late, exhausted from finally getting his paperwork mostly in order, and there are no food smells coming from the apartment. Worried, he unlocks the door and walks inside to find Kyle wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, lying on his side and staring at the TV.

"I tried to pack," Kyle says when Stan walks in looking concerned. He curls up tighter, the blanket wrapped around the back of his head like a hood. "It didn't go well."

"Do you want to call off the trip?" Stan asks, walking to the couch. He kneels down to kiss Kyle's face, and it doesn't feel like a normal home-from-work kissing session. It's softer and more automatic. Kyle's eyes are watery, and he shakes his head.

"I can't cancel another trip," he says. "I have to prove that I'm okay now, that this is no big deal."

"You don't have to prove anything," Stan says. "Not to your parents, not to me –"

"Stan, I have to do this!" Kyle says sharply. "Don't try to talk me out of it."

"I'm not, I'm just – do you want me to pack?"

"Yes, please." Kyle pulls the blanket up over his mouth. "I didn't cook," he says, his voice muffled.

"That's okay. You don't have to cook every night. You don't ever have to cook if you don't want to –"

"Don't do that!" Kyle says, only his eyes showing now, the rest of him hidden in the blanket. "Don't tell me I can do whatever I want."

"But it's –"

"I can't handle that!" Kyle says. He pinches his eyes shut. "God, I hate freedom."

"Um."

"Just tie me up and make me do whatever you want," Kyle says. "Please?"

"Alright," Stan says, smelling the gin now. "I'm gonna order a pizza. And you have to eat some of it, okay?"

"Don't ask me if that's okay. But, yes. Just cheese on my half, please."

"Kay." Stan kisses Kyle's eyelids, his heart pounding as he goes for the phone. None of these are good signs. Has he turned into Spencer, Kyle's high strung caregiver, the one who tells him he shouldn't push himself into air travel? Has Kyle really made any progress, or has he really done this a million times before, just like his mother said?

The pizza arrives, and Stan coaxes Kyle out of his blanket to eat some. Kyle is clingy once Stan is on the couch, which is fine by Stan, who lets Kyle hug his arm with he eats pizza with his other hand. They watch nature programs, neither of them speaking. When the pizza is gone Stan cleans the plates, having a hard time getting his head around the concept that he'll be in England tomorrow. Dr. Harper and Carol were all smiles on his last day at work, making jokes about meeting his girlfriend's parents, asking if he'd be allowed to share a bedroom with her. If Stan has to sleep apart from Kyle while he's staying in his parents' house, he knows he'll wake up in the middle of the night the way he sometimes used to, before Kyle, when he would start crying like a lost little boy, not even knowing why, unable to stop.

After dinner, Stan packs, and Kyle remains in the living room, sipping gin and watching television. Stan is cheered somewhat by the errand of packing for two, and he lovingly tucks enough clean boxer shorts and socks into Kyle's bag, along with his favorite sweaters and a couple of books for the plane. His own bag contains some samples he borrowed from Dr. Harper's office this afternoon: Ambien, Lexapro, and a couple of Kyle's other old friends. Just in case.

"All packed," Stan says when he's finished, carrying the bags into the living room. He places them by the door and turns to Kyle, who is wrapped up in the blanket again.

"Thank you," Kyle says, his voice a tiny thing that tugs Stan closer. Stan drops onto the couch and eases the blanket down so that he can rub his fingers through Kyle's hair.

"Ready for bed?" Stan asks. "We've got to get up early to catch our flight."

"I won't be able to sleep," Kyle says. He sits up and looks at Stan, forlorn and puffy-faced from the drinking. "My mother – oh, God. It'll be a feeding frenzy."

"I won't let anybody eat you," Stan says. He scoots closer and puts his arms around Kyle. "Not even her."

"Tell me I can do this," Kyle says. "It matters if you believe I can."

"Of course I believe that," Stan says. "You know me. I have faith in you."

"I do know you," Kyle says. He narrows his eyes, looking into Stan's. "She'll try to convince me that I don't, but I do."

"And I know you, too," Stan says. "You can do this."

Neither of them sleeps well, both of them restless and clingy, taking turns as the little spoon. Stan has dreams about Kyle's parents that make him remember his anxiety about Christmas morning as a child, the nightmares he would have about not getting any presents from the nuns, just lectures about the sins he'd committed during the year, or unwrapping bundles of sticks instead of toys. Bizarre visions of his meeting with Kyle's parents play and replay behind his eyelids, everything just a slightly skewed version of his worst fears about how this might go.

The morning is so cold that Stan can feel it before he gets out of bed, the frost that's out there waiting for them. He turns off the alarm and wakes Kyle as gently as possible. Usually he slips out of bed while Kyle is still asleep, has his shower and only returns to kiss Kyle goodbye. Today, he has to rouse Kyle with him, and there's no time for a shower for either of them. Stan paid for their flight to London, surprising Kyle with the tickets before he could make flashier arrangements with his mother, and it's a bargain bin flight, departing at 6:40 am.

Kyle is a better sport about getting up and getting dressed than Stan expected, though he's silent and puffy-eyed, giving everything he encounters a sad little scowl. Stan makes him an English muffin and puts the last of Carol's fancy jam on it. Kyle has taken a liking to the stuff; Stan will have to ask for another jar as a Christmas gift this year. He wonders if he'll need to bring a picture of a red haired girl into work soon, or if surviving this trip will give him the balls to bring in a picture of the real Kyle. Carol and Dr. Harper have been told that his girlfriend is called Kylie. Carol remarked on the modernity of the name.

"We should get going," Stan says when he's rinsed the breakfast dishes. Kyle puts them in the drying rack, moving in slow motion. He seems ill, but in a useful, downplayed way. If he can get through the whole flight in this half-awake state, they'll be off to a good start.

"Last time I was in an airport you showed up and rescued me," Kyle says, standing in the middle of the kitchen with his hands at his sides. He looks like he's waiting to be carried to the car. Stan shrugs.

"Are you hoping some other guy's gonna show up and save you again?" he asks, not liking the way Kyle is staring at him. Kyle shakes his head.

"You're the last person who ever gets to rescue me," he says. "You might have to keep doing it, though."

"I don't mind."

"Dammit, Stan."

"What?"

"I don't know. Let's go."

It's still dark outside, and Kyle is fussy with the radio on the drive to the airport, unable to settle on anything for more than thirty seconds. Stan drives with both hands on the wheel, worrying about ice on the highway, though he's never encountered a patch of it on this well-traveled stretch.

"I don't know if I can do this," Kyle says when they're close to the airport, a plane ascending sluggishly up ahead.

"Well," Stan says. Usually he knows what he should tell Kyle, when he should be firm and when he should let him off the hook, but in this case he doesn't even know what he wants for himself. It suddenly hits him that, despite all the good sleep he's been getting, he's exhausted.

"No, but I have to," Kyle says. He pinches his eyes shut and shakes his head. "They're going to meet us at King's Cross at two o'clock. They'll be there waiting."

"King's Cross?" Stan thinks of the crucifixion.

"The train station."

"Oh. Are you okay?" He reaches over to hold one of Kyle's hands, and Kyle squeezes Stan's fingers hard.

"Just don't let go of me," Kyle says. "Not even when we see them. Especially then."

So Stan parks the car one handed, Kyle's hand still clutched inside his. Kyle smiles at him as if he's either grateful or impressed, and they let go of each other only long enough to get out of the car and collect the bags. They're holding hands as they walk toward the airport, no one around but a few taxis and some businessmen in overcoats who don't seem to care that two guys are holding hands. Stan thinks everything is going great, incident-free, but as soon as the sliding doors that lead into the baggage claim area whoosh open, Kyle stops.

"Wait," he says. Stan turns back to him, wanting to pull him inside, the hum of the artificial heat beckoning.

"Did we forget something?" Stan asks.

Kyle just stares at Stan for a moment, his mouth hanging open. He looks so blasted apart that Stan is afraid he'll say that he just remembered something awful from those first ten years, and that it's ruined everything instantly.

"I really don't – think I can," Kyle says. He's trembling; Stan can feel it like Kyle is an electrical outlet that he's plugged into. "She – they – I won't know who I am as soon as I see them, but oh, God, Stan, I don't know who I am now, what am I doing? And I'm pulling you down with me, you're just nice, you're just trying to save some – some version of yourself from childhood –"

"Kyle—"

"And I've tried to tell you – tell you how awful I am, and you act like you don't hear me but you must know, because you won't touch me and I don't blame you, I wouldn't want to touch me, either, I'm so used up and they know it, and they'll make it so that you don't even want to kiss me –"

"Kyle, _no_, stop—"

"You don't have to come, you don't, oh, _God_, but I can't go without you, but, but I can't stay here, I don't know what's happening to me, I can't breathe, I can't go back and I can't go forward—"

"Kyle!"

Stan doesn't know what to say when Kyle looks up at him, beyond pleading and well into giving up, standing just outside of the sliding doors that are still open around them. He grabs Kyle's face and leans down to lick Kyle's lips apart, pinching his eyes shut tight, praying hard. He'll do it wrong, he knows he will, but Kyle has to know that he wants this, and everything, that Stan wants to go back and forward and everywhere with him, always. Kyle gasps into Stan's mouth and slides his tongue against Stan's, suddenly timid, letting Stan lick him open again and again, until they're humming into each other. Stan isn't sure if he's doing it right, but the noises Kyle is making are encouraging, and Kyle is holding his hands over Stan's on his cheeks, pressing them there like he never wants Stan to let go. Stan can't stop tasting Kyle's tongue, can't believe how good this feels and how stupidly perfectly wet Kyle's mouth is for him. When he pulls back Kyle's eyes are hooded, and his mouth looks too good like this, swollen and panting and open under Stan's, so Stan kisses him again. He licks into Kyle more slowly but just as deeply, listening to the pounding of his heartbeat between his ears as he pulls Kyle forward until he's firmly enclosed within the warmth of the airport, the sliding doors swishing closed behind him. Kyle seems disoriented when Stan pulls back again, his eyes locked on Stan's as he catches his breath.

"I wanted to," Stan says, softly. "I just – I was scared. I'm scared, too, okay?"

"I know you are." Kyle's voice is tiny. He stands up on tiptoes and kisses Stan again, his hands sliding to Stan's neck, thumbs poised over the thud of Stan's pulse. They stay there for a long time, the baggage carousels silent and empty behind them. The soft, wet sound of their kisses is the only thing around for miles until an intercom announcement startles them. Stan feels like he's just woken up here, like he pulled Kyle out of some other dream and into this one.

"We should get in line for security," Stan says, pressing his forehead to Kyle's. "If you still want to go."

Kyle nods slowly. He looks hypnotized, and he holds Stan's hand when they walk. He's still shaking, but just a little, and by the time they reach security he's smiling to himself, looking smug.

"What?" Stan asks, shouldering him.

"Nothing," Kyle says. He grins at Stan, suddenly wide awake. "Just. I've never been kissed like that before."

"Oh, shit, sorry, I'm not very –"

"Sorry?" Kyle laughs and pulls Stan down to him again, opening Stan's lips with his. Stan lets him do it, though he's blushing, afraid he'll mess it up even as he dives in hungrily, stroking his tongue against Kyle's. People are staring when they pull apart, but Stan doesn't care. He keeps his eyes on Kyle's, looking for disappointment there. Kyle is beaming, touching the tip of his nose to Stan's.

"Nobody's ever kissed me like it meant anything," Kyle says. "You do it – Jesus, like it means everything."

Stan laughs at himself, embarrassed, and relief comes to him slowly as he watches Kyle unlace his sneakers and set them in a bin. He did it, and Kyle looks happy. Stan keeps checking him for hints of resigned pity or secret alarm as they move through the security checkpoint, but Kyle seems calm to the point of being vaguely medicated, as if he's just had a shot of something he's been needing badly.

"You're the first one who's meant anything, too," Stan says when they're on the train, headed toward their terminal. He's whispering when he says so, his lips close to Kyle's ear, and when Kyle turns to smile at him their noses bump.

"God," he says. "I never thought – I'm so excited about this I'm shaking."

"This?" Stan says.

"The flight," Kyle says. "Usually I'm just terrified, or full of dread, but, like. You'll kiss me again on the plane, right?"

"Yeah," Stan says, laughing nervously. It's a different kind of nervousness than the one he's suffered with since that night in the kitchen when Kyle first pressed his lips to Stan's. He's looking forward to the kissing, too, wants to work three weeks worth of waiting into the ten hour flight.

"So, yeah, I'm excited." Kyle holds on to the strap of Stan's carry on bag when the train sways, and Stan puts a hand against the small of Kyle's back. They swoon toward each other but don't make contact, too many people too closely packed around them. Heat pools in Stan's stomach anyway, for the way Kyle smiles up at him and starts laughing under his breath like they're kids in class, getting away with something, cheating on a test.

"You look happy," Stan says when the robot voice overhead announces that their terminal is the train's next stop. Kyle sways toward him as the train moves around a turn, and Stan tucks him against his chest, keeps him steady.

"I am," Kyle says, and he sounds scared again. He closes his eyes against Stan's coat. "I am, I really am, it's weird. I don't know how to live like this."

"Yeah, you do," Stan says. "You just have to remember."

"I'm afraid of remembering," Kyle says. He looks up at Stan. "What if the bad stuff comes back with the good?"

"I don't think you have to remember how to be happy with your mind," Stan says. "Like, with actual memories. I think you could remember with just, like. Your body." He says the last part softly, and feels his cheeks start to blaze. Kyle's mouth falls open slightly, his lips parting with a wet little sound.

"Yeah," he says, and the doors to their terminal slide open.

Their plane is boarding at the very end of the terminal, and they don't have to wait long before the gate opens. Kyle gets quiet as they wait in line, and Stan finds his hand inside the overly long sleeve of the coat he's wearing, one of Stan's, an old one from back in the New Mexico days. It was a gift from the nuns before a camping trip that Stan had been begging to take since he was a kid, alone and during the coldest part of the winter. He thought he would discover something about himself; he would be alone with God, and had been reading about what Mormons called testimony and Buddhists called meditation. He'd thought, also, that he lived with loneliness long enough to be bored by it, but he was wrong about that. He spent a good portion of both days of his camping trip crying to himself, knowing that this would be what life was like after leaving the group home: a single-person tent in a desert, creatures who knew the landscape in a way that he never would going about their business without him. He'd packed his cassette player and headphones in a moment of weakness, and was very glad that he did, his old familiar songs keeping him company all night long. They spoke to him in the way they always had, and God didn't show.

Now, boarding the plane with Kyle, he feels like he's leaving the world where they lived separately and finally met, like they're going to land in a place where they can belong to each other without remembering anything. He knows that won't be the case: the place where they're going will offer a whole new world of stresses for Kyle and potential rejection for Stan. He's still worried about this Christophe character. But he's excited as they settle into their seats, taking off his coat to drape it over himself and Kyle. He finds Kyle's hand beneath it and squeezes, leaning over to bury his nose in Kyle's curls. Kyle has the window seat, and the flight is relatively empty, the lights low as stewardesses prepare the cabin for departure.

"The last time I was on a plane was three years ago," Kyle says. "That was the last time I was home."

"You haven't seen your parents since then?" Stan asks, startled. It seems impossible, since they figure so prominently in Kyle's every thought process.

"They came to the states once," Kyle says. "Last year, after I first got together with Spencer. We did New Year's Eve together. God, I got so upset that night."

"You did?" Stan strokes his thumb over the back of Kyle's hand, under the blanket.

"Yes, it was – they all seemed so pleased. Like everything had worked out. And I _was_ doing well – for me – and Spencer was being very sweet, and a good host, and my mother was quite mild. The new year thing was big for them, too, I think, they were all seeing it as a fresh start. And I knew I should have been glad for that, too, but I got so panicked. I had to go out on the porch and pretend I wanted to look at fireworks so they wouldn't see me crying. I don't even know why I was crying, or – I didn't, then."

Kyle lifts his eyes to Stan's and they kiss softly in the darkened cabin, businessmen on their second or third connection already sleeping as the plane taxis toward the runway. The sun has just barely broken the horizon, but most of the shades on the windows are pulled, and the sky outside is blanketed with a faintly lightening gray.

"The fireworks, God," Kyle says. "They were the saddest thing I'd ever seen. It was like – something beautiful that was far away, like always. I could see them, and I could fucking feel them, in my chest, they were that loud, but I'd never touch them. God, Stan, I feel like I'm going crazy, but I think you were always in my dream about that fucking lake. You were always on the other side."

"I know," Stan says, and he's afraid of what he might mean by that, because he does know, and he always thought he wanted to remember who he was, but now he's not sure he could handle it, not if it means remembering something about Kyle that could be terrible, something they both needed to forget in order to survive. The plane picks up speed on the runway, and Kyle holds Stan's gaze, searching his eyes.

"Who the fuck are we?" Kyle asks, so quietly that it's almost lost in the roar of the engines as they prepare for takeoff. Stan shakes his head.

"I don't need to know," he says. Kyle's mouth quirks like he's not sure that he can say the same, and Stan puts an arm around him, holding him close as they take to the air. He feels Kyle swallowing to fight the pressure change in his ears, and Stan does the same, watching the earth disappear as the plane angles up into the sky.


	10. Chapter 10

Kyle wakes up when the pressure in the cabin changes, confused by the glow of daylight that's shining from beneath several cracked open window shades. He's never fallen asleep on an airplane before, not even close, and it's an oddly pleasurable sensation, like napping while being carried in someone's arms. Stan is awake beside him, but just barely, the blanket they're sharing pulled up to their chins as they blink at each other sleepily. Kyle wants a kiss and is too afraid to lunge in for one, because maybe he dreamed all of that sudden enthusiasm on Stan's part, but Stan is the one who leans down to lick his lips apart, his tongue hot and tasting vaguely of the tray of bad lasagna they were served as their in-flight meal. Kyle doesn't mind, and he opens wide for the taste of Stan, sighing into the kiss. He feels a kind of alien calm pulsing soft and slow between his ribs, at least until the pilot comes over the intercom and says they'll be landing in twenty minutes. Kyle never thought he'd want to stay on an airplane for longer than absolutely necessary, but he wants to linger on this one for days, kissing Stan and whispering to him in the dark of the cabin, their heads pressed together.

"Are you nervous?" Kyle asks, not sure which answer he wants. Stan makes a drowsy little sound and rests his head on Kyle's shoulder.

"A little," he says, and there it is, the answer Kyle wanted. He kisses the top of Stan's head and rests his cheek there. The calm is being diminished by images of his mother and father, their scientific curiosity and smothering appraisals, but the smell of Stan's hair helps somewhat.

"Your first time in Europe," Kyle says as the plane sinks lower. He considers opening the shade over their window, but he doesn't want to dispense with this gentle darkness yet. "Britain is a good gateway drug, I suppose. We could go to Italy next, you know, someday."

Stan lifts his head to smile at him. "I love it when you make plans," he says. Kyle laughs.

"They'd mistake you for a local, or maybe you're too tall," Kyle says. He touches Stan's cheek. "In Italy, I mean. You've got olive skin."

"Will everyone in London know I'm American as soon as they see me?" Stan asks.

"No, but they might suspect."

"How come?"

"I don't know, your shoulders? You have very American shoulders - or posture, or something. It's like, this particular sort of apologetic confidence."

Trepidation bleeds into Stan's expression, and Kyle wants to tell Stan to ignore the anxious bullshit he's spouting, but Stan speaks before he can.

"They're not going to think I'm smart enough for you," he says. Kyle scoffs so dramatically that a flight attendant pauses before continuing on down the aisle.

"Whoever gave you the impression you're not smart?" Kyle asks. He pets Stan's hand under the blanket. "I knew you were intelligent as soon as I met you."

"Yeah? How?"

"The way that you handled Spencer." Kyle grins. "You knew he would try to follow me back to the exam room, and how to stop him, and you did it so coolly. I was impressed, alright?" He kisses Stan's nose.

"All I did was hold the door so he couldn't get in," Stan says.

"Yes, but it was the way you did it. And the little jokes you made when you were taking my measurements. Oh, Stan, don't worry about what they'll think of you. They're going to take one look at you and decide you're too good for me, and they'll spend the whole week trying to convince you they're right."

"Why would they do that?" Stan asks, looking sad and then angry. "They're your parents. If they thought I was good, they wouldn't try -"

"It's not even intentional," Kyle says. "They always think they're doing me a favor when they wreck my life. You'll see soon enough." The calm is shredded now, twisted up like a trouser drawstring that's been mutilated by the dryer. Kyle opens the window shade and peers down at London, which is disturbingly sunny for mid-December. Stan puts his chin on Kyle's shoulder and watches along with him.

"We'll do touristy things," Kyle says, trying to comfort himself with this.

"Can we ride the ferris wheel?" Stan asks. Kyle laughs, then realizes Stan is serious.

"Of course," he says, though he's afraid of heights and considers that thing an eyesore. "And I was thinking of hiring a car and driving up to the Lake District after a few days with my parents." He fidgets. "After getting in touch with Christophe."

He feels Stan stiffen at the mention of Christophe. He's jealous; it's adorable. Kyle turns to rub his cheek against Stan's in what he hopes is a reassuring fashion. He's never done this cuddling business before, not even with Spencer. It's highly addictive and amazingly comforting, but he's constantly afraid that he's doing it wrong, making it too sexual or coming off as campy in his sincere desire to rub himself against Stan at all times.

"And what if you can't find Christophe before the week's over?" Stan asks.

"Well, then I'll continue to be worried," Kyle says. He turns back to the window and pulls on his lip, guilty for making Stan jealous but unable to turn off this bad feeling that something has gone wrong with Christophe. There's never been anything remotely romantic between them, and Kyle wishes he could make Stan understand how hilarious that idea is, though he's not sure how to explain it himself. Christophe is good looking, and he might be described as Kyle's type: a dark, brooding loner, angry but idealistic, and oddly motivating when Kyle is at his worst. Maybe Kyle never attempted to seduce Christophe because he needed his friendship too much, but seducing friends is the exact sort of destructive behavior Kyle usually dives into head first, and he knew Christophe during all of his most self-annihilating stages. It was more that Christophe never seemed to move in the same empty cycles of desire that Kyle did. He was above that sort of thing, eschewing drugs and scoffing at sex, happy with just his cigarettes and the occasional rant.

It's not the length of Christophe's disappearance that's bothering Kyle, it's the timing. Christophe has always had an uncanny ability to be there when Kyle needs him most. Even if he's been out of Kyle's life for a year, when Kyle is in his darkest places Christophe will show up, or call, or write a letter that makes Kyle laugh through his tears. Kyle needs him now, badly, to confirm that Stan is something Kyle will actually be able to keep, so that Kyle can relax into the feeling of having him. Christophe is the one who sent Kyle in search of Stan in the first place, and Kyle feels like he must have some answers, even if he doesn't have all of them. He's increasingly troubled by the fact that some part of him knewStan from the very beginning, enough to make him comfortable with sleeping on his couch, then in his arms. The last thing he wants is to find out that Stan had something to do with the past that's so painful he can't remember it, but his nagging sense of curiosity about their connection grows stronger every day.

Seats are returned to their upright position, tray tables are securely fastened, and the plane lands, Kyle squeezing Stan's hand very tightly as the wheels meet the ground. Stan gives him a kiss on the cheek when they've landed safely, and smiles at him as if to say, _See, I told you, everything's fine_. Kyle smiles back, wanting to believe that.

They collect their bags and leave the plane, Kyle's legs beginning to shake. In Akron it's approaching dinnertime, and if he was back in the safety of Stan's apartment he would be making his five o'clock drink, starting a curry or a pasta sauce, humming to himself as he counted the minutes until Stan returned home to give him one of those teasingly chaste little Catholic kisses. Due to that particular phenomenon, Kyle would have spent most of the day on his back in bed, jerking off and thinking about Stan's obvious need and powerful guilt, how raw and unhinged he would become if he ever let himself have what he wanted. For awhile it was sort of wonderful, just having those tiny tastes of Stan and being able to imagine him as a noble sort of romance novel hero who had a big scene coming, one that would feature Kyle being ravished to the point of losing consciousness. But as the weeks wore on Kyle began to doubt the fact that Stan wanted to ravish him; he wanted _something_ from Kyle, certainly, but actual sex didn't seem to be it, and finally Kyle decided that Stan must think he's riddled with STDs and, while tragically desirable, too dirtied by his past to touch.

That might still be the case, though Kyle has allowed himself to begin hoping that it's not. The way Stan kissed him in the airport was fearless and real, and they made with a kind of teenaged desperation on the plane, but when Kyle found Stan's hand under the blanket he didn't have the nerve to bring it to his lap so Stan could feel how hard he'd made him. He didn't have the nerve to investigate Stan's condition, either, not wanting to scare him or disrespect his rather unique journey to gayness.

On the tube to King's Cross, their bags piled in their laps, Kyle imagines what his parents will think when they see him walking toward them with Stan. They'll think that Stan has fucked him already, of course, and that fucking is the primary objective of the relationship for both parties. They'll think that Kyle is on something illicit, because he'll be smiling a lot, for Stan's benefit, not wanting to scare him any further than he already has. Kyle didn't expect Stan to actually agree to take this trip, and was caught off guard when he did, stuck with the decision he'd unwittingly made, but as they pull into King's Cross he feels as if he's where he should be. Even if his parents chew him up and spit him out, Stan won't detest him as a chewed up thing. Stan will soothe his fingers over the chew marks, and together they can find out what's going on with Christophe.

"They said they'd be near the ticket machines," Kyle says when they're riding the escalator up to the station. His breath is fluttering rather than flowing from him, and Stan is looking up at him as if he can't decide whether to be terrified or supportive.

"Miranda and Dan, right?" Stan says.

"Yes. Miranda Lambert and Daniel Cartwright. She's teaching at Cambridge now, on fellowship. He's back in London, working with kids. Christophe is his only adult patient." He didn't mean to bring Christophe up again, and leans down to kiss Stan between his eyes when the sporting look on his face dampens a bit. "Don't be nervous," he says to Stan, though he's really speaking to himself.

"I still think I should have brought a gift," Stan says.

"No, no," Kyle says. "We don't really do that here." Stan would have offered something sweet and awkward, like a knickknack meant to represent Ohio, or a jar of that homemade jam that Kyle loves. Kyle's parents would have laughed about it in private, and Kyle couldn't have borne that, even if Stan remained oblivious.

His parents are punctual, as always. Kyle can see them on the approach, though he pretends not to. His mother looks especially tiny amongst the King's Cross crowd, wearing a pantsuit, her dark hair down to her shoulders now. She kept it very short when Kyle was growing up, in order to be taken seriously. Beside her, his father looks fat and pitiful, his hands shoved in his trouser pockets and his giant coat tucked under his arm. When they've made eye contact with Kyle he feels as if he's about to enter a facility and these are the mild but stern orderlies who've been assigned to receive him. Also, more distantly, he wants to curl up between them and be cared for the way he was when he was first brought to the institute where they fell in love while overseeing his hysteria.

"Mum," Kyle says. He's never managed to think of her that way, too desperate to cling to whatever American mannerisms he can, but he knows she prefers it to _Mom_, which she has a history of taking personally, as if Kyle is calling her by some other mother's name. She looks emotional when she comes forward to hug him, but their embrace is brief. Kyle has gotten used to Stan's long, tight, American hugs, and he feels a bit rejected when his mother passes him to his father.

"Looking well," his father says, his voice a little pinched. Kyle didn't expect either of them to be this affected, but maybe he should have, since he hasn't been home in three years and hasn't properly spoken to either of them in almost a month.

"This coat is much too big for you," his mother says, rearranging it around his shoulders. She looks at Stan and smiles. Kyle knows her well enough to understand that she's relieved that Stan is handsome and harmless-looking, but only in the sense that this means he'll be no threat to her intellect. She puts her hand out for him. "This must be Stanley."

"Stan - I go by Stan, um, hi." He's coloring already, and Kyle can feel his mother's predatory edge sharpening as they shake hands. "Nice to meet you."

"You as well," Kyle's mother says. "I'm sure Kyle has told you horrible things."

"Mother!"

She rolls her eyes and waves this off. "He's said only good things about you," she says. "Alarmingly good things, in fact."

"It's good to meet you, son," Kyle's father says. He shakes Stan's hand too hard, overcompensating for his oldness. "I applaud you for putting some weight on our boy here."

"Yes, this is miraculous," his mother says. She reaches up to pinch Kyle's cheek until he winces. "You must have him eating actual American food. Kentucky Fried Chicken?"

"Coors Light," Kyle counters, narrowing his eyes at her. She smiles. Somehow she looks younger than she did last year, though Kyle doesn't think she's had any work done. Doing so would be too great an admission of weakness.

"So you're a beer man now?" his father says to Kyle as they walk from the station.

"Not really," Kyle says. "Just - occasionally."

"Spencer said you were drinking quite a bit," his mother says, pretending to be partially distracted by a parking slip.

"Oh - what would he know about it?" Kyle says. "I haven't spoken to him in almost a month."

"I don't think he knows what to do without you," his mother says. "He keeps ringing up, hoping I'll have some new gossip about you. It's rather sad, what you've done to him." She cranes her neck, peering around Kyle to look at Stan. "Kyle is a heartbreaker," she says. "He has a reputation."

"I don't," Kyle says, scowling at her. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Need I offer examples? Peter Emge, for one?"

"Oh, Christ, I was thirteen!" Kyle sneaks a look at Stan. He's quiet and sort of perplexed-looking, not unlike Kyle's father at any given moment.

"Precisely," his mother says. "You started early. Oh, Kyle, don't make that face, I'm giving you a compliment." She pulls on one of his curls. "Haven't you been cured of your moodiness, or was that only a rumor?"

"Now we're calling it my moodiness? Is that your newest clinical term for it?"

"I'm referring to your non-clinical moodiness." She's still touching his hair, trying to order it even as they walk out into the parking area and get blasted by an icy wind.

"Don't pick on him, Mir," Kyle's father says.

"I'm hardly picking on him, darling. Stan can understand what I'm talking about, I'm sure?" She peers at him again. "Would you find it hard to believe that Kyle had broken some hearts?"

"No," Stan says. He sounds uncertain, as if he's not sure which answer he was supposed to give. "But - I'm sure he didn't mean to."

"Oh, I'm sure of that, too!" Kyle's mother says. "Those are always the most accomplished heartbreakers, I find. The unwitting ones."

"Any word from Christophe?" Kyle asks, his teeth already clenched. He can see his mother's smile in his peripheral vision, and from the corner of his eye it looks like a sneer.

"He hasn't returned to his sessions," Kyle's father says. "But he's always been my most erratic patient."

"I'm sure Kyle has told you all about Christophe," his mother says to Stan.

"A little," Stan says. "Um. He's French?"

"Oh, very French! I don't think I've ever seen him without a cigarette. Even when he was a boy. He tried to get Kyle to smoke with him, once."

"It wasn't Christophe talking me into it," Kyle says. "I wanted to try it. It was a disaster, of course. I threw up." He's proud of himself for beating his mother to saying so.

"Our son is quite adventurous," Kyle's mother says. Stan laughs uncomfortably.

"That's interesting, coming from the person who diagnosed me as agoraphobic," Kyle says. Refuting her diagnoses is one of his favorite pastimes, though it also makes him feel shaky and dangerous undefined.

"Adventurous in one or two specific senses," his mother says.

"Alright, Miranda," Kyle's father warns, mumbling. Kyle hates it when does this, pretending to be Kyle's great defender. It's limp and affected, not really done for Kyle's benefit.

"Well, this is an adventure, isn't it?" his mother says, gesturing to Kyle and Stan. "One I'm very keen to hear more about."

"Can we rest after a long flight, please?" Kyle asks. "Before diving straight into the inquiry?"

"This was all your idea, darling," Kyle's mother says. "I thought it would be more of a showcase than an inquiry. But you're right, I'm sorry, I'm so bad at small talk. Stan - you're a nurse, is that right?"

"Yeah," Stan says, brightening, oblivious to the fact that this is a judgment she's making about him, not just a simple statement of fact. "That's how - you know. That's how we met."

"Yes, I'd heard!" They reach the car, and Kyle's mother holds the door open for him, giving him a look as she does. Kyle doesn't want her assuming that he can tell what she's thinking, even if he can, so he smiles blandly and gets into the car, scooting over so that Stan can climb in beside him. Stan is too big for the backseat of the car, his knees pressed against the driver's seat.

"You're a friend of Christophe's, too, aren't you?" Kyle's father asks Stan when they're pulling out onto the road. Kyle rolls his eyes.

"No, Dad -"

"Daniel, I've _told_ you," his mother says. "Christophe thought he was recommending a doctor. We're all very interested to find out how he knew about Stan." She turns to the backseat. "You weren't written about, I checked," she says. Stan lifts his shoulders a bit, laughing nervously.

"Oh," he says. "That's good?"

"Is it?" Kyle's mother raises her eyebrows. Her gaze shifts to Kyle. "Seat belt," she says.

"I'm always reminding him, too," Stan says, too eagerly.

"Kyle is fond of taking risks with his well-being," his mother says, speaking to Stan again. "I'm sure that's not news to you."

"Well -"

"I'm starved," Kyle blurts, tired of the subject of himself, which is the only one that ever comes up when he's with his parents. "I hope we're having an early supper."

"Oh, that's right, you've got an American appetite, now," his mother says. "I suppose I'll have to learn how to cook at last."

"Kyle always had an appetite," his father says. "Just for curry and French food. Eh, son?"

"Right, Dad," Kyle says, and he can hear his accent. He looks over at Stan, wanting to apologize for it, but Stan is smiling at him. He's calm, despite Kyle's mother. Kyle realizes that he's not holding Stan's hand and amends that, returning his smile. He can feel his mother noticing this, but she withholds whatever comment she might have made. Kyle moves closer to Stan and watches the highway landscape through Stan's window. He feels amazingly okay, as if whatever irritation his parents cause is a thing that can exist within him without taking over completely, because Stan's grip on him will keep him firmly in the real world, where other things matter more.

His parents' home is just outside of West Hampstead, and the property might be described as an estate, but the house itself is not especially impressive, at least not to Kyle. Growing up, all of his parents' acquaintances had homes like this one: painted stone and high ceilings, a long driveway and a separate garage. It's pre-war, carefully landscaped and pretentiously appointed. When Kyle was growing up they lived closer to the city in a modest flat, but that was before his mother became famous for her clinical opinions about him.

"This is amazing," Stan says as soon as he's in the foyer. Kyle wishes he would have warned Stan not to flatter them.

"Thank you, dear," Kyle's mother says. She's looking at Kyle rather pointedly. "Well?" she says. "How does it feel after all this time?"

Kyle can't tell her the truth: he feels smaller inside this house, jumpy and short of breath, as if every lampshade and throw rug is watching, analyzing him. He's still holding Stan's hand, very tightly now.

"It smells the same," he says, because his mother seems to need an answer.

"Fair enough," she says. "I suppose you two will be comfortable sharing Kyle's old room?"

"I'll be comfortable there," Stan says. Kyle's mother laughs, and Stan does, too, uncertainly.

"So you haven't converted my room into a yoga studio or something?" Kyle says.

"Of course not. We've kept it just as you had it."

It's the kind of statement that should be comforting, but from her it sounds like a threat. Kyle suffered some of the worst days, weeks, and months of his life in that little bedroom where he spent many unhappy hours from the ages of fourteen to eighteen. Just thinking about it makes him feel medicated, and not in the freeing way that Stan's touch does. He remembers feeling as if he was glued to the bed in that room, as if no pill he could swallow would ever properly motivate him to rise. He heads up the stairs, pulling Stan up behind him, nowhere near ready to let go of his hand.

"I'll set out towels and wash rags," Kyle's mother calls. "Let me know if you're in need of anything else. We've got condoms, you know."

"Mum!" Kyle hisses, stopping halfway up to turn and glare at her. She shrugs.

"It's the sort of thing you forget to pack," she says. "Or perhaps not, if you're young. At any rate, supper in an hour, since Kyle is famished."

She disappears, and Kyle grumbles to himself as he makes his way up the rest of the stairs. It's not the frank discussion of sex that bothers him, though he could really do without that. He feels as if he's being accused of not protecting Stan from whatever silent ruin might be hiding in his body. Kyle has told her that he's been tested and that back in the bad old days her colleagues used protection when they fucked him, but she wouldn't have brought up condoms just now if she didn't suspect that Kyle has picked something up along the way, and that someone as obviously sweet-natured as Stan - and surely, in her eyes, harmlessly stupid - needs to be warned.

Kyle's mouth is set in a tight line as he walks into his old bedroom, his fingers twitching around Stan's hand. As promised, the room is just as he left it: posters of American bands he liked as a teenager peeling on the walls, the bedspread clean but slightly gummy-looking after absorbing the cold sweats from so many nightmares, drab olive curtains half-closed over the window. Kyle looks at Stan, trying to breathe evenly through his nose, not sure what to tell him. Stan leans down to kiss him before he can speak. It's just a soft little thing, but the sound their lips make as they press together is like something huge at the center of the room, a secret source of sunlight shining through the floorboards.

"Sorry," Stan says, whispering. The door is open and the hallway is empty, his parents downstairs. Stan reaches up to hold Kyle's face, stroking his cheeks with his thumbs. "I just missed that," he says. Kyle moans and kisses him again. They kissed every ten minutes or so through their flight, until it was funny enough to make them laugh into each other's mouths every time they leaned in for more, both of them vaguely embarrassed for wanting it again, and again, and again.

"So?" Kyle says. He reaches up to hold Stan's wrists. "What do you think?"

"It's nice," Stan says, looking around the room. "I like your Weezer poster."

Kyle laughs. "I meant about my parents."

"Oh, um, well. I don't know. They're not really how I imagined, like. Parents. In general. But they seem nice."

"Nice?" Kyle rears backward. "That's a fascinating interpretation." He realizes he's being condescending; it's catching when he's around his mother. He kisses Stan again to make up for it. "I love that you're here," he says, just gushing now, but it's no less than Stan deserves. He grins.

"Me too," he says. "Are you going to show me around?"

"Yes, actually." Kyle's heart beats a little faster, and he takes Stan's hands from his face, brings them to his lips and kisses his knuckles. "There is something in particular that I wanted to show you."

They leave their bags in the room and head down the hall, Kyle pulling Stan along. The library is empty, as usual. His parents each have their own well-equipped home office, and if they need a book they'll almost always take it elsewhere after finding it. Kyle lets Stan linger in the middle of the room and admire the tall shelves of books while he rummages through the closet. He hopes what he's hunting for is still here, and that his parents won't catch him looking for it.

"Have you read all of these books?" Stan asks. He's joking, but there's some caution in his tone, as if he's afraid Kyle might have.

"God, no," Kyle says, still rummaging. "I hate nonfiction, and manuals, and case studies. That's all they've got here. I like, you know, novels. Like the ones you have at the apartment."

"You do not," Stan says, laughing.

"Yes, I do! I like that one I was reading last week - _Blood Pact_? That was fantastic."

"Yeah, that one's pretty good," Stan says, and he sounds cheered. He comes to stand beside Kyle, peering over his shoulder. "What are you looking for?"

"My clue box," Kyle says. "It's funny, it used to terrify me just knowing it was in here. Now I'm desperate to - ah! Here it is."

His hands shake when he grips the box, and he hopes Stan won't notice. He doesn't want this to get emotional or weird, he just wants to show Stan this thing that he's always been afraid of, maybe to diminish its power. He's holding his breath as he kneels down and carefully pulls the box open. Stan kneels down beside him, waving his hand through the dust that rises from the box flaps.

"This is what I was wearing when they found me," Kyle says. He lifts the little jacket from the box first, dull orange with a green collar. The pockets have always been empty, but he's still tempted to check them for scraps of paper that might contain messages from his real parents, just like he always was when he secretly sought out this box as a child. He looks up at Stan, surprised to see that his eyes are wet, his gaze focused on the jacket.

"Oh, sorry," Kyle says, horrified with himself. He starts to put the jacket away. "I didn't mean to upset you, I know it's a lot to-"

"No, it's just," Stan says. He reaches out to touch the hem of the jacket, smoothing it across the top of the open box. His hands are shaking, and Kyle's eyes are burning now, too, because he's seen Stan get emotional before, but never like this. Stan touches the little pockets, the collar, the buttons. He does so cautiously, as if he's afraid the jacket will disintegrate under his fingertips. "It's just so small," he says. "You were. You were so small."

"I'm sure you weren't much bigger when they found you," Kyle says. He reaches over to touch Stan's wrist. "Here, I'll put it away, I just wanted to show you-"

"You don't have to put it away," Stan says. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. "I'm okay, um. Let me see the rest."

"Alright." Kyle hands Stan the jacket, smiling when he hugs it against his chest as if it's ten-year-old Kyle, alone and crying in a windy supermarket parking lot. Kyle takes out the pair of pants he was wearing that day, a shade of green that calls to mind military surplus, and the little tan socks with black heels. There's a pair of worn sneakers, and the green ushanka that he's always wearing in his dreams.

"Can you imagine a ten-year-old boy in this?" Kyle asks, holding up the hat. "It was about three sizes too big. I wouldn't let them take it off of me at the hospital. The nurses had to steal it while I slept, and they wouldn't give it back until I'd washed my hair."

Stan stares at the hat as if he's trying to decide if it's a bomb or a kitten, his brow slightly furrowed. He lets the jacket crumple into his lap and reaches out to touch the flaps on the hat, running his thumb and forefinger down the length of both.

"Why did you stop wearing it?" Stan asks, and maybe it should seem like an odd question, but as soon as he's asked it Kyle feels like he was waiting for the excuse to tell him.

"My mother said it was an unhealthy symbol," he says. "A mental block."

In defiance of her, he pulls it onto his head. The gesture is easy and obvious, because Stan is here, and Kyle can't believe how scared the idea used to make him, as if putting the hat on again would erase three years of his 'progress' in therapy. He smiles at Stan when he's wearing it, because it fits just right, no longer big enough to hang down over his forehead and impede his peripheral vision.

"Kyle," Stan says, and Kyle's grin disappears, because he hears his name as if it's coming from somewhere else, not from Stan, or at least not from the Stan who is sitting here looking at him now. He freezes, careful not to move, trying not to think, his eyes locked with Stan's. He feels like he does when he's waking from a dream and trying to remember its details, knowing that he won't. He's not afraid, not exactly, but his heart is slamming in his chest, and when he grasps for Stan's hand he doesn't need to look down to know that Stan is reaching for him, too. They both exhale, their fingers lacing together over the open box.

"Kyle?" Now he really is hearing his name from elsewhere, but it's just from down the hall, his mother calling for him. He breaks from Stan's gaze, afraid to let her see them like this.

"I'm coming," he says, and he hurries to take the hat off. His mother appears in the doorway of the library before he can hide the box, and she flips the light on, frowning.

"What are you - oh." She looks from Kyle to Stan, and back again. "Your old things?"

"Yes, I wanted to show him." Kyle is proud of the strength of his voice, despite his insane heart rate and shaking hands. "Are you calling us for dinner?"

"Martha has made your favorite," his mother says. She's looking at Stan's lap, at the jacket, and Kyle feels the pressure of her stare as if it's on him, the wheels of her analysis cranked into top gear. "But take your time, of course."

"We'll be right there," Kyle says, ready for her to be gone. Stan is still staring at him so intently that Kyle wonders if he's noticed that they're no longer alone. "And put the light back out, would you?" Kyle says when his mother turns for the door.

"Is this a seance?" she asks, eyebrows rising.

"No, it's a conversation," Kyle says sharply. She stares at him for a few beats, then smiles as if she's just declared checkmate.

"Of course," she says, snapping the light off as she leaves.

In the gloomy afternoon light from the library's windows, Kyle looks at Stan again. He's glad to see that Stan's eyes are dry, and not quite as hypnotically engaging as they were before his mother came in. Stan squeezes Kyle's hands and leans across the box to kiss his nose.

"You looked cute in that hat," he says. "You should wear it, if you want. I mean, whenever you want."

"Maybe I'll take it back home with me," Kyle says. It's resting in his lap, just a hat again, though for a moment he felt sure that it was something more, the sort of enchanted object his mother warned him about. "Look, there's one more thing." He reaches into the box and lifts out the little green mittens. "These certainly won't fit anymore."

"Oh," Stan says, softly. He takes them from Kyle and brings them up to his lips, kissing them as if they're unbearably adorable baby animals. Kyle laughs, and feels guilty for it when Stan blushes.

"You can keep those if you want," Kyle says. "As a souvenir."

"Thanks," Stan says. He puts one in each of his back pockets. "I have no idea what I was wearing when they found me. They never showed me."

"Do you remember that day?" Kyle asks. They reach for each other's hands again, something unnameable lingering in the room, passing back and forth between them with their breath. "The day they found you?"

"No, not really," Stan says. "They said I was conscious and answering questions, that I knew my first name, but the first thing I really remember is being in a hospital bed. The nurses, you know, they were there when I woke up, the nice ones. They were so good to me, really sweet. I hope - I mean - people were careful with you, right? When they found you?" His voice is tight now. Kyle slides the box away and climbs into Stan's lap the way he's wanted to every day since they met, straddling him, looping his arms around Stan's neck. Stan folds Kyle into his arms and sighs, Kyle's old jacket pressed between them like a child they're protecting.

"They were good to me," Kyle says. It could certainly be interpreted as true. "But I think I was always waiting for you. And now you're here, Stan, you're _here_." He moans and hides his face against Stan's neck, squeezing his legs around Stan's waist. Stan is sniffling and rubbing a hand through Kyle's hair, his other arm snug around his back.

"I should have come sooner," Stan says.

"You would have if you could have," Kyle says. He sits back and kisses the corners of Stan's eyes until they're dry again. "And anyway, you got here in the nick of time, so. Well done."

"You sound British," Stan says, grinning.

"I know," Kyle says. "Forgive me. C'mon, now. Let's get this dinner over with."

Downstairs, the dining room table is set with the fancy china, candles lit. Martha makes herself scarce, the meal she cooked steaming from heirloom servers: potatoes_ au gratin_, roast beef with onions and carrots, steamed spinach. It was Kyle's favorite because it always seemed vaguely American to him, the meat and two sides, the butter and limp vegetables.

"You could have stayed upstairs a bit longer," his mother says as they enter the dining room. They sit across from Kyle's parents at the table, which is big enough for twelve, just four chairs settled in the exact middle. Kyle's mother is wearing a red velvet top that makes him think of Valkyrie women, which is surely her intention. His father seems pretty drunk, sipping beer from a fancy sifter.

"I told you before," Kyle says, unfurling his napkin. He sees Stan do the same out of the corner of his eye, obviously nervous about making the right moves. "I'm hungry."

"Kyle was upstairs with his box," his mother says, touching his father's wrist. "Do you remember when he thought we didn't know that he was sneaking up to root through it?"

"Well," his father says, looking at Kyle like he always has, as if he's a deformed zoo animal who deserves his pity. "It's natural for him to be, ah. Curious."

Kyle looks at Stan. This is how it's always been: a statement about Kyle's behavior followed by a justification or explanation. As if he can't interpret the language they're speaking, as if he's not really here. Stan just looks nervous, fidgeting and glancing down at the stupidly complete selection of silverware around his plate.

"He might have shown his boyfriend the garden before the box of old clothes," Kyle's mother says. She smiles at them like someone who's just watched them eat an evicting apple. "That's what you are, yes?" she says, her gaze flicking to Stan. "His boyfriend? Do you object to being labeled as such?"

"Oh – no," Stan says, and when his cheeks go pink is like it's like watching his soul spilled out on the floor, defenseless and liquefied. "I mean – no, I don't object." He looks at Kyle, desperate for guidance, as if Kyle has ever known what to do with these two. "Ah – yeah. We're boyfriends?"

Kyle has to stop himself from wincing, because Stan is being sweet, deferring to Kyle on this matter, but he sounds like he's not sure, and Kyle can feel his mother's triumph radiating from across the table, because she was expecting as much.

"This relationship is for life," Kyle says. He grabs the bottle of wine from the middle of the table and pours himself a glass. "Look how unafraid I am to say so, Mum." He gives her a wide-eyed, faux-crazy expression, because what else can he do? She keeps her expression neutral, the suggestion of a smile lingering in her eyes.

"Kyle," she says. "Drinking?"

"I'm off my meds." He plunks the wine bottle down and gulps from his glass. "I'm sure you're happy to hear I don't need them anymore."

"Which, ah, meds have you quit?" Kyle's father asks, looking confused. Kyle would feel sorry for him if he believed he actually cared. Ten years ago, Kyle was a fascinating side project for both of his parents, but his father's research has branched off in the direction of religion-obsessed delusionals – people who believe themselves to be angels – while his mother has found professional satisfaction in focusing solely on Kyle.

"What's your opinion on this, Stanley?" Kyle's mother asks.

"On – my – on what?" Stan asks. He hasn't yet touched his food, or his silverware.

"Kyle quitting his medication," his mother says. She smiles prettily; it's unfair that she's pretty. "You're a medical professional, after all."

"Oh." Stan laughs and glances at Kyle. He looks like he's not sure if he should apologize or ask for help. "Well, he seems, um, fine without them? But I'm, uh. I'm not a doctor."

"It's this crazy thing," Kyle says, pouring himself more wine, because somehow his glass is already empty. "He lets me make my own decisions about which poisons do or do not get pumped into my body. Mad, I know!"

"Poisons!" Kyle's father says, but then he just drinks his beer, Kyle's mother's giving him a look that shuts him up. She turns her gaze back to Stan.

"I'm sure you've had training," she says, pronouncing the word 'training' as if it's what a prostitute does before walking the street. "So this must alarm you, Kyle's insistence that the medications that have been prescribed by our colleagues are 'poison.' Do you think these are the opinions of someone who should be allowed to dictate his own treatment?"

Kyle can feel Stan looking at him, but he can't look back, his hands closing around the seat of his chair the way they always did when he was a kid, when his parents were both furrowing their brows at him from across the table, waiting for him to come up with a rebuttal to their more heavily endorsed opinions.

"Um, I," Stan says. His hand flutters against Kyle's under the table, but Kyle can't let go of his chair, can't look at him. "I think, um. Those kinds of drugs are sometimes, kind of, um. Over-prescribed?"

Oh, God, no. Even if he'd said so without the questioning tone, he might have been okay.

"Over-prescribed?" Kyle's mother smiles. "Yes? Tell me more."

That's her battle cry, the undefeatable refrain: _Tell me more_. There is no correct response.

"Um," Stan says, looking at Kyle again. Kyle looks back this time, wishing he knew how to talk while his mother takes mental notes on everything he says.

"You think Kyle shouldn't be on psychopharmaceuticals," his mother says, and it's not a question. "That's interesting."

"Can we talk about something else?" Kyle says, hopelessly. "Politics or something?"

"But this political," his mother says, holding up a finger. "Isn't it, Dan?"

"A bit, yeah," Kyle's father says. He's mostly retired from the conversation, swilling his beer. Kyle remembers what he was like when he was first falling in love with his mother; Kyle was there to witness it all. It was like seeing a poodle fall prey to a pitbull, though in hindsight he admires the pitbull more than he pities the poodle.

"The reason I'm asking, Stanley," Kyle's mother says, "Is that, as someone who is enjoying certain aspects, shall we say, of the personality of someone who has been diagnosed with certain disorders, the fact that you're advocating an unmedicated approach for the person whose disorders also happen to serve your specific needs – or desires, if you will – it's a bit alarming, I think."

"Mother," Kyle says, gritting his teeth and leaning forward, not sure what he can threaten here. "Don't."

"He – his, um," Stan says, and none of this would matter if he was actually the sort of asshole Kyle's mother is accusing of him being, but because he's a good person who wants to help Kyle, her strategy for making him doubt himself might work.

"I hope you won't think I'm being too forward," Kyle's mother says, as if she cares. "But I presume Kyle has at least insinuated that he's had some extensive experience in this area."

"This area?" Stan says. He's looking at Kyle, but Kyle can't stop staring at Stan's untouched plate of food, hating the charade of hospitality that it represents.

"Sex," Kyle's mother says. "Which might sound crass, and I'm sure I seem rather hateful at the moment, but I think you're intelligent enough to realize that someone who moves into the apartment of a person he's known for – what was it? Three days? Two? Ah, that this person might be suffering from a disease."

"You wouldn't understand!" Kyle says, hating how drunk he sounds already, but he can't seem to stop refilling his wine glass. "Stan – he – it's not—"

"Kyle's not," Stan says, weakly, and he doesn't seem to know how to finish. He's staring down at the table, toying with a salad fork. Leave it to Kyle's parents to put out a salad fork when a salad won't be served.

"Boys," Kyle's father says, holding up his hands. "No one's accusing you of doing this, ah – knowingly."

"Of course not!" Kyle's mother says. She reaches for the wine bottle, capturing it before Kyle can pour more for himself. "There's obviously nothing malicious going on here. That was my fear, I'll admit, but now that I've seen you two together, well. It's obviously narcissistic withdrawal."

"What?" Kyle narrows his eyes at her, leaning over the table.

"It's common in children," Kyle's mother says. "And in the two of you, considering what you've been through, a pediatric diagnosis will always be appropriate. Oh, goodness, well – Stan might not know what we're referring to." She turns to him, putting on an expression that would be appropriate for a kindergarten teacher explaining subtraction to a five year old. "Narcissistic withdrawal essentially means that you reject parental figures in favor of the fantasy that your needs can be satisfied by yourself," she says. "Kyle has been prone to this since we've known him."

"No!" Kyle says, standing from the table so abruptly that the many pieces of unused silverware rattle. "Maybe I had a stupid fantasy, but it wasn't about relying on myself! I wanted – I wanted another boy like me, you know that, Mother, you know what I dreamed about – and Stan is that boy, not just for the amnesia thing – he – he would be that boy, anyway!" Kyle makes himself shut up, chewing on his tongue, watching the progress of his mother's analysis as she winds through her equations, coming to the usual conclusion: _Look at this hopeless child, look how much he needs me_.

"You used the word fantasy," she says. "That's interesting."

"I'm through with being interesting to you!" Kyle says, and it feels like a brilliant line until his mother cocks her head as if to inform him that those weren't anywhere near to the last words on this.

"Is that why you've done this?" she says, so calmly, _sympathetically_, that it takes Kyle back to ten years old, looking up from a child-sized cot to answer her questions, holding his hat on with both hands because he knew she wanted to take it from him.

"Why I've done –" Kyle says, wishing that Stan would stop looking at him, because he can feel it against his cheek like sunlight from a planet he won't visit again.

"Is that why you've undertaken this particular adventure?" his mother asks. "Because you want to be interesting in a new way, under a different gaze?" She looks hurt, worried, and Kyle doesn't know what he's doing, it's true, doesn't know if the drugs that he's stopped taking were saving him or killing him.

"I have to pee," Kyle says, and only on the word 'pee' does he hear how drunk he is, which should be impossible on roughly three glasses of wine, but he hasn't had a bite of food and didn't exactly devour the crappy lasagna that was served on the plane six hours ago. He leaves the table and feels all of them watching him: his mother with her certainty, his father with his relative disinterest, Stan with – with something Kyle thought was love and understanding. But Kyle is crazy; he remembers that now, here in the house where he learned to accept it. Sane people don't pick good looking nurses to move in with after three days – or was it two? – and responsible people don't allow crazy assholes to sleep in their arms, thinking that some cuddling and gin will be enough to smooth over the issues that have destroyed everything else.

Kyle trips up the stairs, not sure where he's headed until he pushes through the door of the bedroom that kept him captive as a teenager: the bedroom that kept him safe. He never got fucked in this room, it was always elsewhere that he allowed that to happen, that he _invited_ that to happen, because he's sick, because he doesn't know how to feel without toppling over the edge of anything that could be considered normalcy, tipping himself onto his hands and knees and letting whoever's behind him do what they will. Stan is – no, Stan is good, but that's why he hasn't fucked Kyle yet, because he doesn't want to be sucked down into the swamp of him, where nothing good can live, and that's the worst part about this, the thing his mother is wrong about. She thinks Stan is preying on Kyle, but it's Kyle who's preying on Stan, luring him into this impossibly sticky spider's web where Kyle belongs, where he's returned to collapse against these same old sheets, here in the dark, his parents' impressive silverware still clicking down in the dining room.

Sleep claims him like a butterfly net, snatching him in mid-thought. He dreams that he's lost in the woods, child-sized and wearing the clothes they found him in. He's looking for Stan, but Stan isn't here, and Kyle knows that his searching is hopeless, but then Stan appears, and Kyle isn't a child, though he is in his childhood bedroom. The room is dark, and Kyle offers no resistance when Stan pulls him up from the mattress and into his arms.

"Are you okay?" Stan asks. He strokes Kyle's hair and lets him hide against his chest, still trembling from the cold in the dream.

"I drank too much," Kyle says, as if that's all that took place down there. He sits back to check Stan's face. In Kyle's absence, his parents might have been more successful in convincing Stan that he's taking advantage of a sick boy, withholding Kyle's meds so that he'll bend to his will. Stan looks sad but not devastated. His hands are cupped around Kyle's cheeks.

"I thought you just had to go to the bathroom," Stan says.

"I didn't, actually. Are they still - is it over?"

"I guess so," Stan says. "You'd been gone awhile, and your mother said she was going to check on you, but I said I'd do it."

"Oh, thank you," Kyle says. He throws his arms around Stan. "Thank you, thank you for being the one who was here when I woke up."

"No problem, dude," Stan says, squeezing Kyle tightly. He kisses his ear and sits back, looking worried again. "What she said -"

"I'm sorry I let it get to me," Kyle says. "I - just - you don't buy any of that, do you? Thinking your parents are wrong about you is _narcissistic withdrawal_, and that falling in love is - is some kind of disease, like the way I was before-"

"I don't buy it," Stan says. "And, you know, your mom isn't really that impressive. No offense. Her whole strategy for winning an argument is not letting the other person finish their thought."

"It's surprisingly effective," Kyle says. "On me, anyway."

"It's not fair when she does it to you," Stan says, frowning. "The things she expects you to just be able to handle - it's cruel, okay? The way she throws all of that in your face. I guess I see why she's worried, but she didn't even give me a day to win her over before she came at you with all that crap. And I'm not sure that you shouldn't be on your meds, I don't know anything about prescribing that kind of stuff, and it's not fair for her to -"

"I know, I know," Kyle says, because Stan is getting worked up now, breathing harder through his nose. Kyle holds Stan's face and kisses him, the taste of him like fresh air in the stuffy room, the only medicine Kyle needs tonight. Still exhausted, he lies down on his pillows, pulling Stan down with him.

"They were talking about Spencer after you left," Stan says. "About how great he is."

"He's not that great," Kyle says.

"I know, I met him."

They smile at each other, Stan propped up over Kyle, unrolling his curls and letting them snap back. In that dream Kyle was so sure that things were hopeless, that he wouldn't find Stan in those woods. And then he was there, and it's amazing how different this room feels now that he's in it. Kyle's breath quickens as he realizes that this might apply in other areas, too.

"Stan?" he says, and Stan looks up from kissing Kyle's neck.

"Hmm?"

"I, um, I need something," Kyle says. He's never in his life been nervous about asking for this, especially with his partner's cock already hard against his thigh.

"What do you need?" Stan asks. His voice is soft, his fingers sliding through Kyle's hair.

"I need you inside me," Kyle says. Asking for this makes him feel too young to have it, but here, in this house, in this room, he feels like he'll turn into stone without it, something his mother can put up on the mantle and curate for visitors. He stares up at Stan, waiting for his reaction. Stan just seems surprised, his mouth dropping open as he stares down at Kyle.

"Tonight," Kyle says, to clarify. "Please - I know they've made you worry, but I'm clean, I've been tested, and I never let Spencer -"

"I wasn't worried about that," Stan says, shaking his head. "I just - Kyle -"

"I never let him come in me," Kyle says, his eyes wet. "I've never had anyone do it without a condom. Even when I was wrecked, people had heard my reputation, they were afraid -"

"Kyle, shh, you don't have to -"

"I want that from you, please," Kyle says. He might be too drunk to be asking for this, but it's not exactly the first time he's felt this way, like he'll die if he has to go to sleep without Stan's come leaking from him. "I want you to be the only one. The only one who's ever really been in me, please, Stan - if - if you want to."

"I want to, God." Stan closes his eyes for a moment, and Kyle's cock goes full-hard just from the way Stan exhales, as if he's quieting some hungry part of himself. "But you're upset, you're not-"

"Don't be like them!" Kyle says. He sits up and cups Stan's hands between his own. "Don't tell me I don't know what I want, or what I need. You don't have to do this, I know you've never been with a guy before, it's probably weird for you, but if you want it, _please_. Please, Stan, if you want it, take me, have me, put your come in me."

"Fuck," Stan whispers, and he kisses Kyle, either to quiet him or accept what he's being offered. Kyle whines into the kiss, still begging. He doesn't care that he seems pathetic, maybe slutty; Stan loves him. Stan will know what this means for him even if Kyle can't properly explain it.

Kyle searches Stan's eyes when he pulls back, and he knows Stan is doing the same, looking for the thing that they see in each other that makes them both feel like they finally know who they are.

"You'll have to show me how," Stan says, still whispering. Kyle surges in for another kiss, nodding, so relieved that he feels like he might seize up from the force of it. Stan holds him together, lowering him toward the pillows again, his legs spreading around Kyle's body. Kyle isn't sure that he'll be a very good gay sex teacher, but he'll try. He's already struggling to breathe properly as he licks at Stan's lips, trying not to hump his erection up against Stan's too desperately.

"Are you sure you want this?" Kyle asks as Stan pulls his sweater off for him, sending a shock of static into his curls. "I don't want to pressure you."

"I'm sure," Stan says. He's shaking as he takes Kyle's hand and brings it to his crotch. The shiver that moves through Kyle is strong enough to make him arch, and he touches the bulge between Stan's legs timidly, like a kid who's never done this. It feels true; it's never been like this. The cocks he's handled have always felt like props, the required equipment for getting fucked or getting someone off. Just the shape of Stan's through his jeans feels special, sacred, because it's _Stan's_, and he's letting Kyle have this, trusting him with it.

"I've wanted this so much," Kyle says as he flings off his undershirt, showing Stan his scrawny chest. "I was so afraid - I mean - I thought you didn't want me."

Stan pulls back and looks at Kyle, eyebrows arching.

"I got a boner the first time I touched you," he says. Kyle laughs nervously, and Stan shakes his head. "I'm serious," he says.

"Whoa," Kyle says.

"I want you so much," Stan says, still shaking his head, his voice a little broken. "I'm just - I don't want to mess it up. I've never done this."

"I know," Kyle says, though the fact that Stan was getting boners just from touching Kyle's hand makes it that much harder to believe that he never tried something with a fellow altar boy. He strokes Stan's face until the calm pools back into his eyes. "It's okay," Kyle says. "I'm gonna show you. I'll teach you everything." He hasn't topped someone in years, but he'll even try that if Stan wants it. Not tonight, though, or at least not until after he's had Stan inside him, skin to skin, nothing between them.

"As soon as I met you, I felt like I'd spent my whole life being separate from you," Stan says. "Like, that had always been with me, making everything harder, the fact that you weren't there. Not just someone, you know, to love - _you_, Kyle. You were _missing_."

"I know," Kyle says. He pushes his pants and underwear down, flushing as he shows Stan everything, his hard cock and his pale thighs, every inch of him trembling when Stan touches him, moving his fingers from Kyle's shoulders and down over his chest, slowly. He touches the trail of hair below Kyle's belly button, nervously thumbs a ball, and they both sigh when Stan's fingers close around Kyle's cock. It seems to fit in Stan's hand, locked into place, and Kyle drools while he watches Stan stroke him, his legs spreading wider.

"You can tighten your grip," Kyle says, touching Stan's cheek as he says so, hoping he won't be too sensitive to feedback. "Do it like you'd touch yourself."

"Oh, um. Here, then." Stan gets up and sits behind Kyle, pulling him up between his legs, Kyle's back snug against Stan's chest. Sitting like this, Kyle can feel the heavy pound of Stan's heartbeat, and it's the most erotic thing he's ever experienced, at least until Stan gently parts his legs and reaches down to take hold of his cock, pumping him with firm, slow strokes. Kyle's mouth falls open as he watches. He drapes his legs over Stan's, spreading them as widely as he can, his balls tightening.

"Is that good?" Stan asks, whispering. He actually sounds nervous. Kyle is already trying not to come, his hands twitching around Stan's hips.

"Yeah - uh huh." Kyle can barely talk; he gives in to the insane pressure building in his balls and reaches down to guide Stan's hand, tightening his fingers just a bit more, prompting him to stroke faster, faster, and then he's shouting and arching and flopping back against Stan as he spills himself over Stan's fingers.

"Oh, God, oh," Kyle is babbling as he comes down, boneless in Stan's arms. Stan is so warm and solid and perfect, and Kyle is ready for him, wants it now. He tips his head back onto Stan's shoulder and they kiss, Stan breathing hard into Kyle's mouth, his cock stiff and hot against the small of Kyle's back.

"Kyle," Stan says, his hands moving down over Kyle's arms, up along the insides of his legs, sliding through the come on his chest. "God, you, you're so -" He kisses Kyle again when he can't come up with the right word.

"Can I suck your dick?" Kyle asks when their eyes meet again. Stan's get so wide that Kyle has to bite down on a laugh.

"Just a little," Stan says, which does make Kyle laugh. "Because, um, I want to come inside you. Like you said." He squeezes Kyle and moans, rocking him in his arms. Kyle didn't even lock the door, but he feels like it would be impossible for one of his parents to burst in. He's in another world now, far from the room where he fell asleep after dinner, and only Stan can touch him here.

"Just a little, then," Kyle says. He kisses Stan's chin and turns over in his arms, mouthing at his neck. The scent of him is strongest just under the point of his jaw, and Kyle has nosed at this spot many times in bed and while cuddling on the couch, afraid to take a taste. He sucks at that spot now, on one side of Stan's jaw and then the other, and grins when Stan moans.

Kyle moves lower, down over Stan's chest, pausing at his left nipple, hoping that he isn't one of those guys who feels weird about having attention here. Stan goes quiet when Kyle licks his nipple, watching intently, his mouth wet and open. When Kyle takes his mouth away, Stan lets out his breath. It comes out choppy and hard, and he takes hold of Kyle's hair.

"Keep doing that," he says. He lifts his hips, rubbing his cock against Kyle's thigh. "Please?"

Kyle gladly obliges, bringing Stan's hands to his own chest. Stan gets the idea, and plays with Kyle's nipples while Kyle sucks and bites at his. Stan is breathing hard with some combination of arousal and concentration, rubbing Kyle's nipples in clumsy circles until they're burning with overstimulation, his dick getting hard again. Kyle moves lower, pressing open-mouthed kisses to Stan's stomach, Stan's hands sliding up into his hair.

"This might be a little too much for the first time," Kyle says. "But I love it when, um. I like having my hair pulled."

"Won't that hurt, though?" Stan asks, looking fretful, and Kyle wonders if he'll end up having everything he likes reversed by Stan, or retaught to him with tenderness and intensity that he doesn't have to experience as pain. He does think he'd really like it if Stan tugged on his curls when he came, though.

"It won't hurt," Kyle says. "But you - you do whatever you feel. Can I, um. Take your pants off now?"

"Oh, yeah!" Stan says, sitting up so fast that he almost knocks his head into Kyle's. "Um, sorry. Of course you can." He's doing so himself, his hands shaking on the zipper as he pulls it down.

"We could get under the blankets if you'd be more comfortable," Kyle says. Stan shakes his head.

"Then I wouldn't be able to see you," he says. He shoves his pants down, freeing a meaty, uncut, incredibly hard cock, the sight of which actually makes Kyle's stomach growl. He still hasn't had dinner. Stan's cock seems like a decent substitute, even if he won't be coming in Kyle's mouth. Kyle licks his lips and eases Stan back onto the pillows, kneeling between his legs.

"Are you okay?" he asks. Stan looks kind of terrified, though his cock is leaking steadily and his nipples are hard. Kyle feels sort of dizzy for a moment, just looking at him, thinking about how close he is to having permission to put his hands anywhere, everywhere.

"I'm okay," Stan says. "Come and kiss me for a minute, though."

Kyle does, their bodies pressed together from ankle to shoulder while they kiss. They gasp and grin at each other when their cocks slide against each other, Stan smiling up at Kyle like he's thanking him for coming up with this revolutionary cock-touching idea. He's worshipful; it makes no sense. Kyle has done nothing remotely worthy of the way Stan looks at him.

"What does it feel like to not be circumcised?" Kyle asks. He reaches down to wrap his hand around Stan's cock, pushing it up against his own. He can see Stan go mindless for a few seconds, pupils fattening.

"It, um - feels really good," Stan says. "At the moment."

"Can I play with your foreskin?" Kyle asks, heat spilling down the back of his neck and creeping between his shoulder blades.

"Yeah," Stan says, spreading his legs wider, as if this will give Kyle better access to his foreskin.

"Is there anything special, um, that I should do?" Kyle asks.

"You've never been with a guy with foreskin before?" Stan asks, and then he looks worried, like maybe that was an insensitive question.

"I've never really done this," Kyle says. He moves down between Stan's legs again, pushing his fingers into the looser skin. "I mean, not - slow like this. Not calm."

"Not even with Spencer?"

"Well, yeah, but I didn't really like his dick. I didn't want to dwell on it."

"What was wrong with it?" Stan asks, his shoulders bouncing when he laughs.

"It was skinny and uptight, like him. And sometimes he couldn't get hard for me, like, I don't even think he was attracted to me? Before me he dated all these beefy blond guys. He just wanted to date Miranda Lambert's son, ginger hair or not – oh, shit, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For talking about a shitty dick while in the presence of such an awesome one." Kyle kisses the head of Stan's cock for emphasis.

"It's okay," Stan says, grinning. "I'm glad we can talk while we do, you know, this stuff. I was afraid it'd have to be all serious and quiet."

"When have I ever been quiet?" Kyle asks. He keeps his eyes on Stan's face as he runs his tongue from the base of his cock to the tip, watching his eyes go unfocused.

"I don't know if I'll be able to not come if you put your mouth on it for real," Stan says, suddenly panicked when Kyle leans up and opens wide. "Sorry," he says, wincing. "I'm just. It's been – um. I've been wanting you so long."

"It's okay," Kyle says. He crawls up to kiss Stan's hot cheeks. "I know. Me too. I'm ready, I need you."

"I need you," Stan says, nodding, his eyes locked on Kyle's.

"I'm going to lie on my back, if that's okay," Kyle says. He flips their positions, fumbling for lube in the drawer on his bedside table. Whatever else she's done, God bless his super king kamehameha bitch of a mother for not getting rid of it.

"Don't I need to stretch you?" Stan asks as Kyle slicks his cock, his ass starting to do that tingling-with-anticipation thing that makes him feel like all he'll ever know is emptiness until he gets filled.

"Later, or – next time," Kyle says, already panting. "I'll be tight, but – it'll be good. For both of us, trust me."

"I do trust you," Stan says. He looks like he might throw up, poor thing. Kyle pets his cheeks, kisses him softly, lets their eyelashes bump together. "But – Kyle – what if –" Stan stops there, his lip trembling.

"What if?" Kyle is afraid to hear more. _What if your mother is right, what if we're both out of our minds, what if I did know you once and it was terrible, what if it's worse when we remember?_

"What if I'm not any good?" Stan asks. He's up on all fours over Kyle, his cock bumping uncertainly between Kyle's legs.

"Stan, stop worrying," Kyle says, and the smile on his face feels like it belongs to someone else, someone who's been here before and knows everything's going to be okay as long as they're together. "It's just me, dude. C'mere."

It still takes him off guard when Stan starts to push into him, and at first he thinks it's just because he's never done this bareback, nothing between the walls of his ass and the searing hot cock that's sliding into him. Then he stops looking down at what's happening between their bodies and looks up into Stan's eyes. Stan slips all the way into him as their eyes lock, and something happens in Kyle's chest that makes him think of those fireworks, that night when he could feel them shaking through his bones. They were that loud.

"Stan," he says, and there it is again, that way he says Stan's name that he didn't know he was capable of, transforming him into someone who was never afraid of anything as long as he could reach out and find Stan's hand, someone who always knew that Stan would be there when he reached for him. It's happening to Stan, too, Kyle can see it, and he can feel it, shuddering from Stan's body and into his, like a message delivered between tree houses, conveyed by tin cans and string.

They don't even kiss, can't break eye contact, and Kyle is both acutely aware of the burn in his lungs and certain that even if all the oxygen was sucked from the room, he could breathe the thing that they've become, which is bigger and more important than air. Stan moves, just slightly, and they both let out the breath they were holding, hot against each other's lips.

"See?" Kyle says, his voice a squeaky thing, diminished by the energy that he's devoting to this connection, never wanting it to break. "No one else – only you."

It feels true when he says it, and when Stan presses his face to Kyle's cheek, shuddering so hard that for a moment Kyle thinks he's come.

"You were always mine," Stan says. He takes a handful of Kyle's hair and tilts his head back, pulling just hard enough to bring tears to Kyle's eyes, their noses pressed together. "Always, I don't care who had their hands on you. You were mine."

"I was," Kyle says, blinking the tears out, his chest aching with something that's akin to penetration, deeper than anything he's known. "I knew I was, all that time. Stan, I think I _knew_."

"You know who I am," Stan says, and for a moment it startles Kyle, because he thinks Stan has actually remembered, but when their eyes lock again he sees that he hasn't, that he's still lost inside himself. It's Kyle who he's trusting to know him, now and always, and Kyle nods, because he feels the same way. He might never figure out who he is, who he was, but Stan knows, and it's enough.

Stan thrusts three, four times, and he comes with a shout, grabbing Kyle's dick as if for traction. He pumps him until he's down in the dark again with Stan, back inside his body, thrumming and warm and pinned under Stan's weight. They cling so hard, neither of them trusting the universe not to rip them apart again.

"I should tell you something," Stan says when they're lying together afterward, damp and sleepy under the blankets.

"Hmm?" Kyle wants to sleep here for weeks, to make up for all the hours when this bed made him toss and turn or served as the altar for the medications that erased him until his liver had evicted them.

"I – you'll laugh," Stan says. Kyle fights to get his eyes open and scoots even closer, pressing his forehead to Stan's.

"At what?"

"I was a virgin," Stan says. He chews his lip, fidgets, and Kyle can feel Stan's skin growing hotter against his. "I wasn't going to tell you, but. I want you to know everything. So, yeah. You were my, um. First."

"I knew that," Kyle says, grinning. "It wasn't like I thought you'd been with men before."

"I'm not just talking about men," Stan says. He looks scared, like Kyle could still take the sex they had back now that he knows this. "I mean, anyone. I never. You know. So."

Kyle waits to feel surprised, but then he just isn't. Of course Stan waited; the part of Kyle that knows him knew that he would. He still wants to honor Stan's confession, because Stan is nervous and twitchy in its wake, studying Kyle's eyes like he's looking for regret there. Kyle kisses his face and pulls Stan down against his chest, cradling him there.

"Good," Kyle says. "You're so mature, with your 'I don't care who had their hands on you.' I'm not as level-headed, which shouldn't come as a surprise. I would have hated anyone who touched you."

"You don't think I'm a freak?" Stan asks, tilting his face up toward Kyle's.

"Oh, Christ," Kyle says. "Anything you do that's freaky just makes you that much more charming. The musicals, for example. I can't imagine you without them. And no, anyway. I think you're too sensitive for casual sex, and you have self-respect, and just. I'm glad it was me."

"Me, too," Stan says. He beams and scoots up to kiss Kyle. Before they can properly lock lips, there's a knock on the door.

"Kyle?" It's his mother, of course. Kyle can't believe he ever let her talk him out of anything, but since nothing was ever as good as this, maybe it makes sense. He grins at Stan, who doesn't even flinch when she tries the knob and finds it open.

"Hey, excuse me?" Kyle says, sitting up and throwing an arm over Stan, shielding him. His mother stays mostly in the hallway, pulling the door shut again.

"Ah, sorry dear," she says. She sounds oddly repentant, soft. "I didn't mean –"

"We're in for the night," Kyle says sharply. "I'll see you at breakfast."

Never in his life has he felt that he's in a position to put his mother in her place, but this is it, and it's glorious, Stan a warm pressure at his side, waiting to hold him all night.

"Darling, I'm sorry," she says. Her voice is actually a bit unsteady, which is alarming, but Kyle won't let this new strategy get to him. "I just need to speak with you for a moment."

"Can't it wait until morning?" Kyle asks. "I'm not decent."

"Kyle, oh." She sighs, and there's a heaviness to it that freezes him. "You'll want to hear this right away."

Kyle looks down at Stan, needing fortification, and Stan looks back at him with nothing but promises that nothing can hurt him now, making Kyle newly determined to get rid of his mother.

"If you have something to say, you can say it in front of Stan," Kyle says. It's a line he's heard in movies, but it feels important nonetheless. His mother sighs and pushes the door open a bit wider, her shadow falling through it.

"It's about Christophe, darling," she says, and that's the one card she could have played that might actually work at this point, even with Stan so close, everything so near to right. Only it doesn't feel like a card she's playing. He's never heard his mother sound truly sorry about something.

"Kyle, they found him in his apartment," she says, her voice trembling. "He's dead."


	11. Chapter 11

It's a slow Wednesday afternoon at the garage when Kenny finally sees Tweek's car pulling into the lot out front. He freezes, his soda bottle half-raised to his lips as he checks the driver's seat to see which of them has brought it in. He chews on the rim of the bottle when he sees that it's Wendy. It's what he wanted, but he's also terrified. When he fixed up Tweek's car last week, he left the engine coolant low, hoping this would happen, but now he feels like she's about to place him under citizen's arrest for being an asshole. The last thing he wants to do is give Wendy and Tweek more financial stress, and he's going to fix the car for free. He just needed an excuse to see her. Before, he thought he wanted to apologize for the way they left things that night when he drove Tweek home, but now that she's walking toward him, looking pissed off as her knee-high boots splash through melted snow in the parking lot, he kind of wants to resume their fight, if that's even what it was.

"What's up?" he asks, wishing he was a better liar. He never had to learn how, since his parents didn't really give a shit about what he did as a kid or a teenager.

"Something's going on with Tweek's car," she says. "I think it's leaking coolant. It's overheated twice this week."

"Weird," Kenny says, his heart beating fast as she studies him, her eyes slightly narrowed. "Is Tweek, uh. I guess Tweek was too busy to bring it in?"

"Tweek is at work," Wendy says. She looks away from Kenny, folds her arms over her chest and glances around the garage like she's checking to see if anyone else is here. "Aren't you freezing in here?"

"I'm okay," Kenny says.

"Where's your coat?"

"Over there on the chair," Kenny nodding to the greasy little desk area where he answers the phone if he's not under a car.

"Why aren't you wearing it?" Wendy asks, still frowning at him like she can't decide if he's crazy or just a dick.

"Because I'm not cold," Kenny says. He holds out his soda. "Fresca?"

"No, thanks." Wendy sighs and turns to the parking lot, looking at Tweek's car. She's wearing a fitted pea coat and a floppy knit hat that makes him think of the ones she wore to school as a girl. Kenny is still partial to hooded sweatshirts; he's got one on over his coveralls, unzipped.

"Wanna give me the keys so I can pull it onto the lift and take a look?" Kenny asks. Wendy looks back to him and seems confused for a moment.

"Oh - the car - yeah. I just, God, Kenny, if I have to replace the engine or something I'm gonna flip." She pinches the bridge of her nose, making Kenny think of Stan, his heart lifting. "It's been a hard month."

"Tell me about it," Kenny says. "I can't get Karen covered by my insurance, so I'm paying for all these doctor visits out of pocket." Craig is reimbursing him as part of his agreement with Karen, but things are still tight until his checks arrive. Wendy sighs and shakes her head.

"What's it going to be like when the baby is born?" she asks. "Can Karen work?"

"Can she work? Yes. Will she? No telling. And then we'd have to pay for day care - hey, fuck, but it'll be alright. We've all got problems."

He starts to walk out toward the car, despite the fact that she hasn't given him the keys yet. Wendy reaches out and takes his arm.

"Wait," she says, her eyes softening. "Um. I could have had Tweek bring the car in after work, but I wanted to say sorry. For how I was the other night."

"Look, me too, I'm sorry -"

"You didn't do anything wrong." She's still holding onto the sleeve of his sweatshirt. "You were doing us a favor, really, taking Tweek home and - and we really should pay for the repairs to the car -"

"Don't worry about it, seriously."

"Does that come out of your paycheck or something?" Wendy asks, looking worried, and it's amazing how much he still resents this, and how much he missed it, too: her particular brand of unrelenting concern.

"I said don't worry about it," Kenny says. "Tweek has given me plenty of free coffee over the years. And you. Well. You know what you did for me."

"The other night - I didn't mean to be so condescending," Wendy says. "I really admire what you're doing for Karen. Okay?"

"It's what any brother would do."

"Yeah? So where's Kevin?"

"Kevin." Kenny groans and steps away from her, out of her grip. "You know where he is."

"I know where he was ten years ago. Kenny." She's quiet for long enough to get him to turn back toward her, drumming the mostly empty Fresca bottle against his leg anxiously.

"We could be friends, you know," she says, her voice so soft that it makes his chest ache, because her sympathy hurts, it always has. It was different with Butters; he always saw the good in Kenny. Wendy saw everything, and that made the fact that she could still see the good hurt like hell.

"We are friends," Kenny says. He knows that it's an asshole lie to tell, because he had to break her car to get her to come here and talk to him. In high school, before Butters recruited Wendy to tend to Kenny's disasters, they'd pointedly avoided each other. Kenny always assumed it was because he'd tried hardest to convince Wendy that Stan and Kyle had once existed, and that she'd gotten sick of what she viewed as his lies. He couldn't badger the adults who'd forgotten them without getting in trouble, and Wendy was the kid whose opinion on what was real had always seemed to matter most. She and Stan had been the level-headed ones, the mature ones, and if they did lose their shit it was always part of standing up for what was right. Kenny had wanted so badly for her to believe him. He still does, though he's given up on the idea that she ever could.

"We're friends, really?" Wendy says, raising her eyebrows. "I felt like I hadn't seen you in a year before the other night."

"I keep busy," Kenny says. He downs the last of the soda. "So do you. I mean, you're the one who has a life."

Wendy rolls her eyes, and Kenny isn't sure if she's dismissing this excuse for the fact that they don't talk, or refuting the suggestion that she has a life. She's the only person he knows who calls him on it when he's full of shit, unless he counts Cartman, which he doesn't.

"It's not like I don't want to be your friend," Kenny says, feeling idiotic. "It's just. You know."

"But you're friends with Butters," she says, so quickly and forcefully that Kenny feels struck. He wonders if she'll actually pretend not to know the distinction between her and Butters.

"Butters needs me," Kenny says. He's still thumping his leg with the empty soda bottle, harder now. "He's in that shitty situation with Cartman."

"And my situation is so wonderful," Wendy says, laughing darkly, her gaze tilting up to the ceiling of the garage. "Or maybe you think I'm like Cartman, and Tweek is like Butters."

"God, no, I don't think that!"

"Yeah?" There's something broken in her gaze when she looks at him again, and he knows she's thinking about all the people in town who assume she married Tweek for his family business. It can't be true, and Kenny wants to ask her about the real reason she ended up with Tweek, but there's another car pulling into the lot, and he's kind of relieved. He'd forgotten how exhausting it is to look her in the face and try to cover his ass. He wants to tell her that he sabotaged her car so that she'd come here, and that he hopes she wore that floppy knit hat for his benefit, but there are customers at the door of the garage.

"Don't go anywhere," he says, and he's surprised when she nods and puts her hands in the pockets of her coat, because she usually doesn't like being told what to do. He touches her elbow as he walks past her, maybe stupidly, but it feels like a tiny triumph.

"You guys need some help?" Kenny asks. The men at the door of the garage are silhouetted by the gray afternoon light, and he feels a pinch of queasiness, because there's something familiar about them even before he's gotten a clear look at their faces. He's had customers from his previous career track show up here before, some of them by accident, some of them on purpose.

"Are you Kenny McCormick?" the taller guy asks. He's definitely not someone Kenny sucked off for drug money; he's too young, too clean, and too obviously glued to the red-haired guy who's standing beside him, looking nervous.

Kenny stops walking, feels the blood drain from his face.

"Who wants to know?" Wendy asks, walking forward like suddenly she's Kenny's lawyer or something. She doesn't recognize them. Kenny steps backward, bumping into her. The men from the picture. He wants to believe it, but he won't let himself, not yet, even when Stan walks forward and Kyle follows without hesitation, just like they always did, just like he remembers.

"This is gonna sound weird," Stan says. "But, um-"

"Jesus, _fuck_!" Kenny can't wait any longer, because that's them, they're here, and Wendy sees them, too. He rushes forward, undeterred when Stan flinches away and Kyle yelps with surprise. Kenny can only get his arms around Stan; Kyle is faster.

"Um," Stan says while Kenny squeezes him hard, trying to find his voice.

"What the hell!" Kyle says. He's pulling at Kenny's arm, trying to pry him off of Stan. "Stop that! What are you doing?"

"Where have you fucking been, dude?" Kenny asks, already crying when he pulls back to look Stan in the face. Kenny is laughing, too, totally losing it, and he really wishes Stan didn't look terrified, but he'll take it, he will. Stan just stares at him in open-mouthed shock, and Kenny moves on to Kyle, who jumps away when Kenny tries to hug him.

"Kenny!" Wendy shouts, and she sounds alarmed, but she'll remember now, everyone will, everything's fine.

"Dude, stop," Stan says, grabbing Kenny's shoulder to keep him away from Kyle. "What are you - Jesus!" Stan goes stiff when Kenny hugs him again, but he doesn't try to punch him, which is a good sign.

"You're so big," Kenny says, laughing, tears still pouring down his face. "Oh, fuck, Jesus, Stan, I can't believe it's you."

"How did you know my name?" Stan asks. He takes Kenny by the shoulders and holds him at arm's length, frowning.

"You must have known Christophe," Kyle says, cautiously approaching. "Did he tell you we were coming?"

"Who?" Kenny wipes his nose and looks at Wendy. He can't stop laughing, and her horrified expression just makes him laugh harder. "Wendy, it's them," he says. "It's Stan and Kyle."

She brings a hand up to her mouth slowly, but she doesn't look convinced, just like she's worried about Kenny's sanity, or sobriety.

"Christophe must have spoken to you," Kyle says. "We got his letter about you - stay back!" There's something so _Kyle_ about the way he says so as Kenny tries again to hug him, and it's hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, making Kenny double over with sobbing laughter.

"What the hell is wrong with this guy?" Stan asks Wendy. He steps in front of Kyle when Kenny straightens up again.

"He's - he's just," Wendy says, taking Kenny by the shoulders and pulling him away from them. "Confused," she says.

"But he knew our names," Kyle says. He stands up on his tip-toes and peers at Kenny from over Stan's shoulder. Something about the way his hands settle on Stan's hips tells Kenny that they're not just super best friends anymore, and he's glad, so happy for them, so happy. He wipes his face with his palms and turns to Wendy, grabbing her shoulders.

"I knew it," he says, beaming, tears still coming. "I knew it all this time. I think I knew they'd come back, too." He hugs Wendy, because he's got to hug someone, and he puts the past ten years' worth of gratitude that he never expressed to her in it, because he's so glad that she was here when they showed up. It feels important.

"Kenny," she says, patting his back. "Let's just - let's calm down."

"You said someone sent you a letter about me?" Kenny says, whirling back to Stan and Kyle, making them flinch. He studied that picture of them for hours, but now that they're here in person he can't believe how _them_ they are, even sixteen years later. "So someone else knows about you?"

"Knew, maybe, past tense," Kyle says, frowning. "He's dead."

"Dead?" Wendy says. Her hands tighten around Kenny's arms.

"Wait, just - wait a minute." Stan holds up his hands. Always the arbiter of peace. Kenny can't stop crying, or laughing, but he tries to quiet both. "You're saying you don't know about the letter?"

"What letter?" Kenny wipes at his face, but it's no good. It's like someone turned on a faucet inside him, and sixteen years worth of plugged up emotion is spilling out of him.

"This letter," Kyle says. He takes a piece of paper from the pocket of his coat. "It was to be delivered to me in the event of my friend's death."

"Wait - your friend," Kenny says, sniffling. "You said his name was Christopher?"

"Christophe," Kyle says, looking down at the letter.

"Was his last name Le-fev-ra?" Kenny asks. Kyle winces at his pronunciation.

"_Lefèvre_," he says. "So you did know him?"

"No, but a month back someone named C. Lefèvre sent me a picture of you two," Kenny says. "Um, here, let me get it." He goes to his desk, where the purple and red bag is tucked safely inside a drawer; he never did let it out of his sight, even slept with it clutched against his chest. He digs out the envelope that holds the picture and shows it to Kyle and Stan.

"Whoa," Stan says. "This is from the day we met. I remember, you were wearing that sweater," he says to Kyle, and any doubt that they're fucking is swept from Kenny's mind.

"Who took this?" Kyle asks.

"I have no idea," Kenny says. "And wait, the day you met? You two met when you were in pre-school."

Stan and Kyle look at each other, then back to Kenny. It's only then that Kenny calms down enough to process the fact that they don't remember him at all.

"You knew us before," Stan says.

"Before what?" Kenny asks, afraid to know. Someone might have hurt them, though they seem okay, their cheeks clean and unscarred.

"Neither of us remembers the first ten years of our lives," Kyle says. "We met just a month ago, because Christophe told me I should visit the doctor's office where Stan works."

"You're a doctor?" Kenny says to Stan, unable to handle the rest of that information. Stan shakes his head.

"A nurse," he says. "Wait, everybody just - wait." He takes a deep breath and locks eyes with Kenny, whose tears have finally stopped, his rational mind beginning to catch up with his emotions. "Did we live here?" Stan asks Kenny. "Me and Kyle? Did we know each other?"

"Know each other?" Kenny exhales, looking back and forth between them. "You were best friends. You were more than that. You were everything to each other."

"I need to, um, sit," Kyle says, taking hold of Stan's arm for balance. Stan guides him over to the chair at Kenny's desk. When Stan looks up, Kenny can already feel the question he's going to ask twisting between his ribs.

"Do you know what happened to us?" Stan asks.

"You just disappeared," Kenny says, and he's not sure if he's guilty or glad that this is all he knows. "You were just gone."

"I have to step in here, I'm sorry," Wendy says. "Kenny, you're saying these are the boys everyone else forgot?"

"Forgot?" Stan says. He kneels down and peers up at Kyle, rubbing his hand. Kyle looks completely lost, his eyes unfocused.

"You really don't remember them?" Kenny asks Wendy. "Look at them - really look at them. Stan was your boyfriend for years."

"Boyfriend?" Kyle says, snapping out of it. Stan looks at Wendy.

"Is that true?" he asks.

Wendy moans, covering her face with her hands. "No!" she says. "Kenny, I'm sorry, but it's not. The only boyfriend I had before Tweek was Token, and that was in high school. I don't know why you're doing this, Kenny, I don't know who these people are, if they're in on it somehow, if you're trying to trick me -"

"I'm not, please, Wendy." Kenny grabs her hands, because her voice is shaking and she looks like she'll cry. "I swear to God, if that means anything -"

"You always swore to God," Wendy says. "No one ever remembered, Kenny, it's just not - you can't - who _are_ these people?"

"Do my parents live here?" Stan asks, the fragile hope in his voice breaking Kenny's focus on Wendy.

"Yeah," Kenny says. "Well, your mom does, your dad moved away after they got divorced, and your sister lives in Denver now, but your mom lives like five minutes away from here."

Stan makes a swallowed up noise and sinks down onto his knees more completely, his head resting on Kyle's thigh. Kyle is quickly cognizant again, petting Stan's hair and glowering at Kenny.

"You'd better not be lying," Kyle says. His eyes flick to Wendy. "Is that true?"

Wendy looks at Kenny. He can see her wanting to believe him. He can feel it in his chest.

"No," she says. "I'm sorry, I don't - I don't think so."

"Why would you say that if it's not true?" Stan asks Kenny, lifting his face. He looks destroyed but sincerely curious, as if he's not ready to discount Kenny's word yet.

"I don't know what happened," Kenny says. "I don't know why everyone else forgot you, I wish I did, I wish I could explain it." He looks at Wendy, then back to Stan and Kyle. "But you two came here for a reason, didn't you? What does that letter say?"

"I don't know if we should go around telling just anyone what it says," Kyle says, looking at Stan.

"He isn't just anyone," Stan says. "You're - he's Kenny McCormick, right?" Stan asks Wendy.

"Yes, that's his name," she says. She steps in front of Kenny again, back in lawyer mode. "I don't understand what you two want with him, though. Are you the ones who sent the picture? Is this some kind of prank - oh, fuck - did Eric Cartman hire you?"

"Who?" Kyle says, and Kenny starts laughing again, hard.

"Sorry," he says when everyone stares at him with annoyance. "It's just, uh. Kyle really hated Cartman - never mind. Look, at least tell me what that letter says about me."

"It said we should go to South Park, Colorado and find Kenny McCormick," Stan says. "Christophe seemed to think you could help us figure out who we are - I mean, who we were." He glances at Kyle. "Should I tell him the rest?"

Kyle sighs and unfolds the letter, smoothing it out on his knees. Just the way he and Stan are sitting makes Kenny want to hug them again: Kyle has his hand on Stan's back and Stan has his arms folded on Kyle's thigh, both of them tense with the need to protect each other.

"The rest," Kyle says, and he shakes his head. "Well, it will sound completely mad, but I suppose that's nothing new. My friend - this childhood friend of mine, Christophe, he was discovered in his apartment, and it was, ah. The police ruled it a suicide, but there were some peculiarities. I won't get into the grisly details, but I was suspicious about the circumstances of his death even before this letter came. Apparently he'd made arrangements with this priest he trusted to get this letter to me in the event of his death. Only he doesn't call it his death in the letter. He refers to it as his staged suicide."

"Alright," Wendy says, shaking her head. "This is - Kenny -"

"I know it sounds crazy," Kyle says sharply. "But Christophe - he was on to something before he died. He must have known that he was in danger, and maybe that I was, too, because he made sure that I got to Stan before this happened."

"So you two actually believe that you grew up here and we all forgot you?" Wendy says, frowning.

"No," Stan says. "Or - I don't know. We don't know what to think. The only information that we have about this place is that someone named Kenny lives here, and he's supposed to help us." Stan gets up, brushing dirt from the knees of his jeans. "I was against coming here," he says. "But Kyle thinks Christophe was trying to protect us by sending us here, and you -" He points at Kenny, his eyes narrowing. "You recognized us. That was real. I could, like. Feel it." He holds Kenny's gaze for a moment, and Kenny smiles, blinking back tears.

"But she says he's wrong!" Kyle says, pointing to Wendy and popping out of the chair. "Unless she's lying."

"She's not lying," Kenny says. "And I'm not, either. Don't you two think it's strange that you both lost ten years' worth of memories? I mean, you remember each other, right?"

"Not exactly," Stan says, glancing at Kyle. "But I think we both feel like, uh. We have a connection we can't explain."

"I need to talk to Kenny alone for a minute," Wendy says, dragging him away by the sleeve of his hoodie. "Excuse us."

"Don't go anywhere," Kenny says to Stan and Kyle, desperate, and Stan shakes his head.

"We won't," he says. This time, when Kenny smiles, Stan smiles back.

"Okay," Wendy says when she's pulled Kenny out of earshot, to the far side of the garage. "What the hell?"

"Wendy, look at me," Kenny says, whispering. His heart is slamming, because he knows this is his one chance. Without her help, he'll never figure this out, and Stan and Kyle will disappear again like phantoms. Wendy's breath catches when Kenny takes hold of her face and tips it up toward his.

"This is real," Kenny says, staring down into her wide gray eyes, unblinking. "I know it's a leap of faith, and I know I swore to God about this a million times, I know it never meant much, but I swear on - those, those nights when it was just us in those motel rooms. When Butters had to go home so he wouldn't get grounded, when you sat up with me and made sure I didn't die. I would pretend to be asleep, but I - I wasn't. I remember every fucking second."

Wendy's eyes change. There's rage there for a moment, at his nerve for bringing up what's always been too sacred for them to talk about, for using it as currency like this, but the rage quickly fades to forgiveness, and he knows that she might not want to believe him about this in particular, but that she wants to trust him anyway.

"I knew you were awake," she says. It's soft but indignant, as if he shouldn't insult her intelligence by pretending that she didn't.

"I swear on everything I never said," Kenny says. "All the times I never thanked you, all the back talk and bullshit I gave you because I knew you - you were right, and-"

"Kenny-"

"No, let me - I swear I'd never lie to you, I mean - I won't lie to you anymore. Okay, um. I fucked up your car so you'd have to come here and talk to me."

"Oh, Jesus." She closes her eyes, and he's afraid that she's shutting him out, but when she opens her eyes again she looks relieved. "I thought, maybe - I kind of wondered-"

"And I can't be friends with you because I'm afraid of you," Kenny says. He would be getting emotional all over her if he hadn't already emptied his tear ducts, but this is actually making him feel strong for the first time in years, something he never would have expected. "I'm afraid of how you see me."

"You think I'm so judgmental," she says, but it's more like an apology than an accusation. "Like I'm above you or something, but I never thought that, never, not even on - those nights - never, Kenny, that was never why I was there."

"I know. That's not what I mean. I mean the way you _see_ me. The way you look at me - into me. So do it now, okay? I know you want to fight it because it doesn't make any sense, but we knew them, Wendy, and someone took them away. And I just - I don't need you to believe all of it right away, but I need you to - shit, I just need you. Like I needed you back then. Please."

Wendy says nothing for a moment, studying his eyes. He knows she's already made up her mind.

"I'm here," she says. "I'm here, okay? This whole thing is fucked up, but. I'm not going anywhere." She reaches up to put her hands over his. Hers are cold, making him think of the way she touched him when he was slumped beside her on scummy motel beds, her cool hand sliding across his forehead while he roasted inside his skin. It was like pure relief, not just for the contrast in temperature but because it was a reminder that she was still willing to touch him, no matter how dirty he was when she came through the door. Every time she put her hands on him it was proof that she hadn't given up yet, an antidote to whatever those other hands had done, better and cleaner than waking up in a brand new body.

Kenny wants to kiss her, but that's ridiculous. He lets go of her face and sticks his hands in the pockets of his hoodie to keep them under control. On the other side of the garage, Stan and Kyle are having their own urgently whispered conversation by the desk.

"Hey," Wendy says before Kenny can return to them. "You want to hear something crazy?"

"Sure. I guess it's your turn to say something crazy."

"It won't compete with the rest of this. But, um. When we were kids, you know, when we were ten years old? And you were so adamant that I'd had this little boyfriend who loved me and disappeared? I always thought." She laughs and looks away, like maybe she's changed her mind about saying this, but then her eyes sneak back up to Kenny's. "I always thought it was this weird way that you were trying to tell me you liked me. Like you were assigning your feelings to some imaginary boy, so you could tell me without really telling me." She chews her lip. "And then they made you see all those therapists and told you that you were crazy, and - fuck, Kenny, I thought it was my fault, for not playing along."

"None of it was ever your fault," he says, and then he does kiss her, quickly, between her eyes, just like he might kiss Karen, except that it's actually nothing like that. He's surprised to find that he doesn't regret it, though he can't meet her eyes afterward. Conveniently, Kyle calls for him.

"Excuse me?" Kyle says. "Are you done? We have some additional questions."

"Do you have a British accent?" Kenny asks as he and Wendy walk back to the other side of the garage. Kyle frowns.

"Only sometimes," Stan says. "He grew up there. Listen, okay. Do Kyle's parents live here, too?"

"Yeah," Kenny says. "And his brother."

"I have a brother?" Kyle's eyes go wide, and he grabs Stan's arm as if he's afraid this information will knock him over.

"And you said I had a sister?" Stan says. He sounds excited, too, and Kenny smirks, thinking of Stan and Shelley's legendary inability to be in the same room without violence.

"Who are their siblings supposed to be?" Wendy asks. Kenny appreciates the fact that she's not pretending to believe him yet, and that she's standing closer than she was before he kissed her, and maybe blushing.

"Ike Broflowski," Kenny says. He looks at Kyle. "That's uh, your brother. And Shelley Marsh is your sister," he says to Stan.

"Marsh?" Stan says. "That's my name?"

"Kenny, be careful," Wendy says. "If they've been looking for the families all their lives - you're promising a lot." She gives Kyle and Stan a sympathetic look. "And I'm sorry, but the Broflowskis and the Marshes never went looking for any missing children. Not that I know of, anyway, and it's a small town. My mom is in the Women's Activism league with Sheila Broflowski, and Sharon Marsh works with my dad."

"Sharon?" Stan says. He steps forward like a kid hoping for candy from a stranger, cautious but eager. "That's my mom's name?"

"Let's take this one step at a time," Kyle says, looking up at Stan warily. "Kenny - ah, Mr. McCormick?"

"Dude, it's Kenny."

"Right, Kenny. Is there anyone else in this town who knows who we are? Other than yourself?"

"No," Kenny says. "I wish there was, but -"

"How do you explain that?" Kyle asks, getting agitated again. "And how do you explain Christophe knowing about you, if you never knew him?"

"No clue," Kenny says. He wishes he could tell them about everyone in town forgetting his death on a regular basis, but that might just send them running out of here, never to return, and it would probably convince Wendy that he needs to be committed. "Who was this Christophe guy?" Kenny asks. "Was he from Colorado?"

"He was from France," Stan says, and Kenny snorts.

"Right, of course. The picture I got was sent certified mail, and the return postcard went to an apartment in London."

"Why wouldn't he have just told me if he knew something?" Kyle asks, talking to himself now, pulling two handfuls of curls into his hands. It's a mannerism Kenny has never seen on him before, since he hardly ever saw Kyle without his hat, but it's familiar nonetheless.

"You just implied that someone murdered him and made it look like a suicide," Wendy says. "Maybe he was afraid of what would happen if he told you."

"Kyle, this is too much," Stan says. "The last place we should be is somewhere Christophe told us to go. If he knew about this place, whoever killed him probably knows, too."

"No, no," Kyle says, waving Stan off. "This is the second directive he ever gave me, and the first one was to find you. That's enough to tell me we're right to be here, but - God!" He looks at Kenny. "Did we have enemies that you were aware of?" he asks. "People who would want to hurt us?"

Kenny starts to say no, then clamps his lips shut with a huff.

"Yeah," he says. "And I think I know where I need to take you guys next."

"Where?" Wendy asks.

"The police station," Kenny says. "To see Eric Cartman."

"Cartman!" Wendy's eyebrows shoot up. "What the hell is he going to do? He's not much of a detective."

"This guy's a policeman?" Stan says.

"The chief of police," Kenny says. He grabs his coat from the desk chair and shrugs it on. "And the only person in town capable of something like this."

"Something like what?" Wendy asks.

"Something apocalyptic," Kenny says. "Something, well. Evil."

Wendy snorts. "That is his middle name."

"Wait," Stan says. "No - you're saying this person might be responsible somehow? Then why the fuck would we go see him?"

"Because if you two are back," Kenny says, unable to keep the smile off his face, "He's going the fuck down."

"I don't like it," Stan says as Kenny walks toward the parking lot, Wendy and Kyle following.

"Oh, c'mon," Kyle says, grabbing Stan's arm and dragging him forward. "This is ridiculous - how could some small town police chief really be responsible for erasing someone's memories?"

"He's probably not," Kenny says. "But I want him to know you guys are here. That you're back."

"Why?" Wendy asks. "To prove something to him? He won't believe you."

"Doesn't matter," Kenny says. He unlocks the car and opens the passenger side door for Wendy, trying not to grin too obnoxiously when she blushes again. "He just needs to know."

"Why?" Kyle asks. "Who is this guy?"

"He was your enemy," Kenny says. "But he was just a kid, and it's more than that. He's like – a symbol. He's what went wrong in South Park after you guys were gone."

"I don't get it," Stan says, hesitating to climb into the car after Wendy and Kyle have buckled themselves in. "What's this wrong symbol going to do to help us?"

"I can't explain it," Kenny says. He walks around to the driver's side, slapping Stan's shoulder on the way. "It's just a feeling. Don't you feel it, too? Like you're back? Like it matters that you're here?"

"I guess," Stan says. He groans, rubbing his hands over his face. "So, like. Me and you. We were friends?"

"You guys were my best friends," Kenny says. He tries not to get choked up, because they don't have time for that. He can feel some kind of cosmic timer ticking, something that was set off as soon as Stan and Kyle's feet touched South Park soil.

"I do feel something," Stan says. "It's the way the air smells. Something like that."

"I'm gonna hug you again," Kenny says.

"Shit," Stan says, but he lets Kenny do it, and hugs him back this time.


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:** Thanks again to everyone who has been reading and reviewing - this chapter represents the halfway mark in the story! There will be twenty-four chapters total, plus an epilogue. From here forward, we're basically into the main action of the story, and mysteries will start unraveling. I'm going on vacation tomorrow, so there will be a week or so without an update, but I hope to get some writing done while I'm away. :)

* * *

><p>Butters is taking his third batch of cookies out of the oven when he hears Eric's car in the driveway. The kitchen is still a mess, which Eric won't like, but hopefully he'll appreciate Butters' efforts with these tester batches of Christmas cookies. Butters doesn't participate in too many social events; the policeman's ball and the Christmas Cookie Bake Off are about it, and he looks forward to both to a ridiculous degree, for the chance to mingle with someone other than the clerks at the grocery store and the onlookers at Hammerheads. Butters wins the Bake Off almost every year, using some of Cartman's mother's old recipes, but he's anxious as Eric blusters in through the front door, because he's always more worried about pleasing Eric with these cookies than the judges at the Bake Off, and Eric is never shy about telling him what needs adjusting to bring them up to his late mother's standards.<p>

"I hope you're hungry for cookies!" Butters says when Eric walks into the kitchen. He looks a little windblown and tired, still wearing his coat. "I'll pour you a big glass of milk," Butters says, going to the fridge.

"I've got no time for milk," Eric says. He shrugs his coat off and throws it onto the kitchen table, barely missing the Russian Wedding Cookies. "I had a son of a bitch of a day."

"Oh, geez, I'm sorry," Butters says, feeling even worse about the state of the kitchen now. Eric doesn't seem to notice it, though. He makes for the bar in the living room and pours himself a generous glass of the expensive brandy. "What happened?" Butters asks. He hurries over to give Eric a hug from behind while he gulps his drink.

"Kenny fucking McCormick and his traveling band of freaks," Eric says. "That's what happened."

"Is Kenny okay?" Butters asks, and Eric turns to give him a look that wilts him.

"Is _Kenny_ okay?" Eric says. "Yeah, Butters, you'll be happy to know that your special friend Kenny is doing great. His class A paranoid delusions have reached a whole new level. Now he's dragging people into my office and telling me they're the missing Marsh and Brovlowski boys who, oh, by the way, never existed."

"Oh!" Butters puts his hands over his mouth. "The boys from the picture?"

"The picture?" Eric narrows his eyes. "You knew about this?"

"I tried to tell you, Eric!" Butters frowns and looks away, scratching his head. "In fact, I think I _did_ tell you -"

"Whatever, Butters! That's not the point! The point is that I had to spend my whole fucking afternoon listening to Kenny rave about how he was right all along, just because he found some dumb asses who don't remember their childhoods, and now he's dragged that busybody Testaburger bitch into the mix, and they're all standing in my office - _my_ office! - telling me I need to take fingerprint samples from our old little league trophy to prove that the whole town magically forgot these assholes who are staring at me like I owe them money or something!"

Butters has no idea how to respond to any of that, so he just stands there with his mouth hanging open and watches Eric pour himself another drink. He downs it, narrowing his eyes at Butters while he swallows, and he's breathless when he slams the glass back on the bar.

"Have you got anything in the oven right now?" Eric asks.

"No," Butters says, confused. "I just took the last batch out - why?"

"'Cause I need to fuck you," Eric says. He grabs Butters and hoists him up, making him yelp with surprise at the feeling of having his legs yanked apart around Eric's waist. "Like, now."

"Yes, sir," Butters says, and he's breathless now, too, already a little hard in his pants, because they haven't done it like this in awhile, and Butters loves it so much when Eric doesn't just want him but _needs_ him. Butters holds on tight as Eric carries him up to the bedroom, hoping Eric will leave his uniform on.

"Stupid fucking Kenny and his goddamn fucking bullshit," Eric mutters, huffing a little while he carries Butters up the stairs. "Wasting my goddamn time with this crap, sixteen motherfucking years later."

"Just don't think about it," Butters says, though his heart is pounding at the news that Kenny thinks he's found those boys. He'll talk to Kenny about that soon, but right now Eric is more important, and Butters hasn't seen him this rattled in awhile. He rests his head on Eric's shoulder and plays with the back Eric's hair until Eric dumps him on the bed. To Butters' delight, Eric merely takes off his gun belt and tears open his pants before falling onto Butters and kissing him hard. It's the best part about these needful times: Eric isn't always big on kissing, but when he's upset he kisses Butters like he doesn't know how to stop. Butters moans into his mouth happily, his legs winding around Eric's back.

"Tell me you don't believe anything that asshole tells you," Eric says when he pulls back, panting and red-cheeked.

"What asshole?" Butters is so hard, can feel Eric's badge pressed against his chest. He wishes Eric would rip his clothes off already, because he loves the feeling of Eric's uniform against his bare skin.

"Goddammit, Butters," Eric says, managing to look fretful for half a second, then just furious. "Kenny! Tell me you don't believe him. You don't believe him, right?"

"About - oh." Butters sighs. He wants to believe that there's some kernel of truth in what Kenny has always said about those missing boys, but he gets the feeling that's not what Eric is asking, even if he doesn't realize it himself. Eric isn't stupid. He knows that Kenny has been trying to talk Butters out of staying with him for years, that he's constantly telling Butters he's too good for him.

"Nobody's going to change Kenny's mind," Butters says. He runs his fingers through Eric's hair, calming the wild look from his eyes. "But I don't - I'd never believe him over you, Eric. You know that."

"You're mine," Eric says, his eyes darkening. He pulls Butters' shirt off and sits back, running his hands down over Butters' chest the way he used to during sleepovers when they were kids, when they both pretended that Butters was asleep. "Say it," Eric says, leaning down over him again. "Tell me."

"I'm yours," Butters says. He pulls Eric down for another kiss, wanting him to taste how true this is. "I always was," Butters whispers when Eric leans back to look into his eyes.

"That's right." Eric is working on Butters' pants now, yanking them down. "You never even belonged to your fuck-up parents. You were always mine."

Butters weighs this statement in his mind as he watches Eric peel his pants away completely, one of his socks coming off with them. He decides he likes that idea: he never failed his parents by belonging to Eric, because he didn't owe them anything. He was right all along to give Eric everything.

Eric fucks him hard, first on his back and then on his hands and knees, his teeth digging into Butters' shoulder as he pumps an orgasm from him. Butters collapses against the sheets and pants through it, shivering and clenching around Eric, his knees spreading wider when Eric leans back to fuck him even more roughly, as if Butters' orgasm has given him permission. Butters just drifts, moaning softly while Eric grunts and slams into him, his hands tight on Butter's hips. He arches as submissively as possible, so that Eric will understand how unshakably he owns him, and how glad Butters is to know it, and to feel it, deeper than anything Eric's body could give him.

Eric's fingers go to Butters' tattoo, and Butters can hear his breath change when he touches it. He's almost finished, and Butters is a little sad to realize this, because he's not ready to disconnect from Eric yet. He sighs when Eric whimpers and unloads into him, sliding down to flatten Butters to the mattress. Their bedroom is humid in the aftermath, and Butters feels like he might fall asleep this way, Eric still buried inside him, breathing hard against the back of his ear, his badge pressed to the point of Butters' shoulder blade.

"Do you feel better?" Butters asks hopefully, reaching back to rub Eric's side with his thumb.

"Wha - yeah," Eric says. He's worn out, his muscles trembling from exertion. He licks the back of Butters' neck, methodical and slow, like he intends to clean the thin sheen of sweat from Butters' skin with his tongue. Butters sighs, his eyes still closed and his smile pressed to the bedsheets. He kind of loves it when Eric has a bad day at work, because this is usually how it plays out at home. Butters has never found satisfaction in anything like he has in being there for Eric when he needs him. Most people think their relationship is based on their childhood sleepovers and high school secrets, and Butters supposes those things had a lot to do with it, but back then Eric never would have entertained the idea of telling people about him and Butters, or letting Butters live in his house. That started later, when they were nineteen, after Liane died.

What little semblance of a relationship they had before that had ended badly before Butters left for college. Eric had never exactly been sweet to him, but he was especially cold after learning that Butters was leaving South Park to get the accounting degree his parents had always wanted him to have, so that Butters could do the books for his father's office furniture store and his mother's side business as a seamstress. Butters didn't have much choice in the matter, but Eric didn't seem to believe him when he said he would have preferred to stay closer to South Park for college instead of going off to Oklahoma to get his degree at his father's alma mater. Eric started ignoring Butters more pointedly than he had before, and by the time Butters was packing for school they weren't talking at all anymore. It had hurt, but at the time Butters was willing to listen to Kenny when he said that he'd be better off without Eric. Leaving South Park still felt like losing an internal organ, even if that organ had been slightly diseased.

At college, Butters was expected to call and check in with his parents nightly, at precisely seven o'clock, under threat of having all financial support revoked, tuition included. He didn't mind this rule so much, though it was awkward to explain it to his roommate, and it meant he would never be able to take that cool Astronomy class that started at six in the evening and let out at nine.

It was on one such phone call that Butters' mother casually remarked that Liane Cartman had died. The news jerked Butters sideways with a sickening jolt, and he had to breathe slowly for a few minutes as he assured himself over and over that she'd said Liane, not Eric.

"How?" Butters asked when he found his voice again.

"I just told you, Butters, weren't you listening? She had some sort of undiagnosed heart disease. There's a rumor that it was related to something venereal, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised."

"Eric - how - is Eric okay?" Butters knew it was a pointless question. He had to sit down heavily on his bed, imagining what Eric must be going through. He'd be alone in that big house, the whole town gossiping about his mother, the kitchen dark. Losing Liane made Eric an orphan.

"I suppose he's fine," Butters' mother said. "He was always such a hateful little thing. I'm sure he'll be happy to get whatever inheritance she left him."

Butters wasn't able to speak much after that. His mother didn't know that he had remained in contact with Eric throughout high school. Their sleepovers had ended in middle school, lest anyone think they were gay, which wouldn't be unfair, considering what they did after the lights were out and the house was quiet. Butters had learned his lesson about drinking cough syrup before going to sleep at Eric's house, but he would pretend to be asleep the whole time, aware that Eric knew he was only faking it, because once things really got going Butters did a poor job of being unresponsive. For a long time Eric only touched his chest and his nipples, uncharacteristically gentle, maybe just to preserve the illusion that he thought Butters was sleeping. He would unbutton Butters' pajama top very slowly, pulling one side open, then the other, and Butters always sighed with relief when Eric's fingers finally skimmed over his skin, sliding from his belly and up to his throat. On the night that Eric's hand slipped down between his legs, Butters cried out, arched, and held Eric's hand in place when he startled at Butters' reaction. Still, they pretended he was asleep, and Eric did Butters the same favor when he cuddled up to him in the aftermath.

Liane's funeral was on a Saturday, and Butters didn't tell his parents that he was coming home. He knew they wouldn't want him taking time away from his studies to attend the funeral of the town whore, who as far as they were concerned had gotten what was coming to her. Butters had always liked Eric's mother. She had offered him seconds whenever he ate over at the house, something his own parents strictly forbade, and she called him sweetheart, sometimes giving him a goodnight kiss on the nights he stayed over. She'd always seemed to think that Butters was a good thing in Eric's life, and Butters could relate to her in a lot of ways, including the part about liking sex a little too much. He told himself he was going to South Park to pay his respects to a nice lady who died too young, not to console Eric, who probably wouldn't want his pity, anyway.

He wasn't surprised to see that most of Eric's extended family was overweight. They all seemed fairly stoic as they stood around Liane's grave, dressed in over-sized black clothing, a few of the women sniffling into balled-up tissues. Butters got emotional himself while Father Maxi read passages from the Bible, but it wasn't the readings that got to him. It was Eric, standing alone on the other side of Liane's grave, his face splotchy from crying but expressionless now, adrift inside himself as he stared down at his mother's casket. He looked twenty pounds lighter than he had when Butters left for college, and Butters suspected he'd lost most of the weight since his mother's death. He wondered if Eric was eating anything at all.

Eric didn't seem to notice Butters or much else, and Butters watched from a distance as an older woman guided Eric into one of the black cars that had borne the family to the cemetery. There was a reception afterward at the house that now belonged solely to Eric, and Butters wasn't going to attend, didn't want to intrude, but couldn't stay away.

When he arrived at the reception, Eric's uncles were watching football with the volume down low, the aunts crowded around a table loaded with food. Some cousins were hanging out in the kitchen, speculating about how Eric would manage to fend for himself without his mother 'wiping his ass for him.' Butters ignored them and searched for Eric, sneaking upstairs when he couldn't find him anywhere on the first floor. Eric's bedroom door was closed, and Butters stood outside of it for a long time, listening to the distant sounds from downstairs, plates clinking and muttered conversation. He stared at the doorknob, thinking about all the things that had been done to him inside that room, how he would spread his legs inside his sleeping bag when he heard Eric creeping toward him, and how his heart would pound when Eric slowly unzipped the first barrier between him and Butters' skin. That room was still where Butters' mind went whenever he touched himself, but it wasn't just about sex. They had kissed, sometimes, and Eric had held him after he took his virginity. The room seemed too small as Butters there stood outside the door, not big enough to contain everything that had gone on inside.

He tried the door and found it open. Inside, the air was stuffy, and Butters thought he could smell cough medicine. There were a couple of empty bottles of the stuff beside the bed, where Eric was slumped over on his side, still wearing his suit from the funeral.

"I said to leave me the fuck ah-" Eric's voice dropped away when he looked up to see Butters standing in the doorway. They stared at each other for awhile, Butters playing with the doorknob and Eric propped up on one elbow, the anger draining from his face. His lip shook, and Butters stepped into the room when Eric started blinking tears down his cheeks.

Butters didn't speak, afraid he would say the wrong thing. He closed the door behind him and went to the bed, pulling Eric into his arms. Eric had always been twice the size of Butters, but he fit against Butters' chest easily that day, hiding his face and holding on tight, only the smallest sounds escaping him as he shook with sobs.

"It's okay," Butters said, hoping Eric would know what he meant. It wasn't okay that his mother was gone, but it was okay for him to cry, and he didn't have to pretend to be strong now, not for Butters. He stroked Eric's hair and rocked him a little, whispering those same words over and over: _it's okay, it's okay_. Eric kept his crying quiet anyway, but he was shaking hard, his hands fisted in the back of Butters' suit coat. He sunk down gradually, exhausted, his head finally resting in Butters' lap. For awhile Butters thought Eric had fallen asleep, but then he sat up, listless and puffy-eyed. His tears had stopped, and his cheeks were newly splotchy from where they'd dried.

"You look good in that suit," Eric said.

Butters blinked a few times, waiting for more. When nothing else came, he reached up to straighten Eric's messy bangs.

"Yours looks nice, too," Butters said, though Eric was a mess. "Let's - let's take this off before it gets too wrinkled, okay?" He slid Eric's suit jacket from his shoulders and turned to hang it on one of the bed posts. Eric sat sniffling while Butters loosened his tie and undid the first few buttons on his shirt.

"There we go," Butters said, softly. "I'd say we should take your belt off, too, but your pants might fall right off. Don't you want something to eat?"

Fresh tears pooled in Eric's eyes, and Butters realized that was still a sensitive subject. He nodded and kissed Eric's nose.

"There's some food downstairs," Butters said, because he wouldn't be surprised if Eric hadn't realized this. "I'm going to bring some up. You rest here, okay?"

Never in his life had he given Eric Cartman an order. He wasn't sure what to expect. Eric seemed confused at first, too, but then he nodded and crawled back to his pillow, drying his face against it. Five minutes later, Butters returned with a plate loaded with the kind of food he'd have expected to find at a Cartman family gathering: Rice Krispie squares, homemade pizza pockets, fried chicken wings and an assortment of store bought cookies. Eric picked at the selection, complaining that none of it was good.

"Do you want me to cook something for you?" Butters asked after Eric's family had left. Butters and Eric were still upstairs, lying together in Eric's bed, Eric sniffling and sighing while Butters pet his hair.

"I won't like it," Eric said. "Nothing tastes right. I need her back - you don't understand."

"Sure, I do," Butters said. "I remember your mom's cooking - it was the best in town! Everyone always said so."

"Yeah," Eric said. He scooted closer, hiding his face against Butters' chest. Butters wrapped him up in his arms, then slung his leg over Eric's side for good measure.

"How about this," Butters said. "I could check the freezer, maybe there's something in there that she was saving?"

"So what? That's not gonna last. She's never coming back, Butters. Never."

"I know," Butters said. His heart beat faster as he wondered what else he could possibly say in response to this. He sighed and closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of Eric's skin. He smelled like he needed a bath.

"I'll just be alone here forever," Eric said. "You'll go back to school, and - and I'll just waste away. I don't know how to cook. And who's gonna do my laundry?"

"You could send things to the dry cleaner," Butters said. He felt Eric stiffen in his arms. He knew Eric was pretending, the way they did during their sleepovers, keeping a safe distance from what was happening. Eric was well aware of the existence of dry cleaners and takeout pizza. Butters slid down so that they were face to face again, searching Eric's eyes for something he already knew he would find.

"Or I could stay and take care of you," Butters said, his voice very soft.

"You have to!" Eric said, clamping his hand over Butters' hip. "Okay? Say you will, promise?"

Butters hesitated. He didn't want to leave Eric, certainly not while he was this distraught, but he didn't want to make a promise like that without some forethought. His parents would be furious. He knew that staying with Eric would be akin to ending his relationship with them forever.

"I'll stay for as long as I can," Butters said, because the fear of disobeying his parents was still enough to make him give up anything they wanted to take from him. Eric looked worried and unconvinced. When he finally fell asleep, Butters climbed over him and left the room quietly, heading downstairs to see how Eric's relatives had left things. The food was still unwrapped on the buffet, the television was still on, and there were dirty dishes everywhere. Butters sighed, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and got to work. It took him over an hour to clean the house, but he felt an odd sense of pride when he was done, peeling off Liane's old dish washing gloves. Freshly cleaned, the house felt cozy again, like it had when she was alive.

He went back upstairs, moving quietly, not wanting to wake Eric. As soon as he slipped back into Eric's bedroom he saw that this was pointless: Eric was already awake, sitting up, breathing hard as he watched Butters reenter the room. Butters hurried to him, wondering if he'd had a nightmare.

"You're still here," Eric said. His voice was so small that Butters wondered if he was hearing things.

"Of course I'm st_-mph!"_ Butters reeled back with surprise when Eric kissed him, but Eric wouldn't let him get far. He licked into Butters' mouth with unashamed desperation, pulling him into his lap, and Butters was quickly aroused, though he knew that was inappropriate. Eric just seemed to want to kiss, and kiss, and kiss some more, which had never happened before. By the time Butters managed to pull free, his lips were buzzing and sore; he could feel his pounding heartbeat in them. He put his forehead against Eric's and looked down into his face, both of them panting as they studied each other, their breath mixing between their open mouths.

"Don't go," Eric said, and Butters nodded, not sure what he was agreeing to: staying for the night, or forever. He almost didn't care as Eric pulled him down into the bed and wrapped around him. Butters had craved this so much, and for so long: being in Eric's arms without having to worm or sneak his way into them, without dreading the moment when Eric would grow bored and tell him to go home. He stayed awake all night while Eric slept, watching the window from over Eric's shoulder, thinking. Trying to reason things out didn't really do him much good: he didn't come to any decisions or conclusions. By morning he'd decided that what he had with Eric wasn't a thinking thing, that it never had been. His body had always made his decisions about Eric for him, or maybe it was his heart. It certainly felt like his heart was calling the shots that night, and in the morning, when Eric let Butters pull him into the shower and clean him up, and the next day, when he managed to get Eric to eat some of the lasagna he cooked.

"Are you hungry?" he asks now, thinking about that first meal he made for Eric, how he'd held his breath as he waited to hear what Eric thought.

"Nuh," Eric moans, mostly asleep. He's pulled out of Butters now, still draped over him but only partly, Butters' skin beginning to chill as his sweat dries. He crawls out from under Eric's arm and helps Eric out of his uniform shirt and belt, leaving his pants and undershirt on. He puts the blanket at the end of the bed over Eric, tucking it around his shoulders.

"I've gotta put those cookies up before they get stale," Butters says. "You want me to bring some up for you?"

"Mmph," Eric says, not really hearing him, his eyes closed and his body heavy with sleep. Butters kisses his cheek, glad to see him so relaxed after the way he was earlier. Butters feels newly invigorated as he slips into the bathroom to clean up a bit before putting his clothes back on. Eric is snoring by the time he tip-toes back through the bedroom.

Downstairs, he hurries to put the cookies in tupperware, munching on a few of them to quiet his grumbling stomach. He hangs up Eric's coat and gets himself a glass of milk, his hands shaking with anxiety as he takes the kitchen phone from the charger and dials Kenny's number. He's just going to make sure everything is okay. He won't be able to sleep until he knows what's going on, and he's not exactly going to get an unbiased account from Eric. Kenny answers on the second ring.

"Butters!" he squawks, and Butters almost chokes on his milk. He can't remember the last time he heard Kenny sound so exuberant.

"Hey," Butters says, keeping his voice low. "Eric told me -"

"Oh my God," Kenny says, laughing. He sounds a little unhinged, but Butters smiles against the receiver, because he also sounds happy. "Butters, it's true, they're back, and it's so - they're here at my apartment, I can't even believe it."

"Do they remember you, too?" Butters asks, not sure which answer he wants to hear. He's afraid someone might be playing a trick on Kenny, though he doesn't know who would ever do that, except maybe Eric, and he seemed too upset over this whole thing to be responsible.

"No," Kenny says. "Someone wiped their memories, too. They didn't even know each other before a month ago. Damn, I wish you could understand how insane that concept is. But as soon as they found each other they were inseparable. It's like, it's like something's been put into motion, Butters, something's finally happening. I'm gonna figure this out, I swear."

"Well, good!" Butters pulls his knees to his chest, still not sure that he understands what the heck is going on. "How do they, um, seem? Are they nice?"

"Yeah," Kenny says. "They're just like I remember them. Kyle's out there cooking some crazy gourmet meal, 'cause he says that will calm him down, and Stan is talking to Karen about her cramps. He's a nurse, apparently, which is weirdly perfect? And Kyle is some - I can't even tell, I think he's a trust fund baby, or an escaped mental patient, but he gets all giddy every time Stan looks at him, just like always, Jesus. You should come over here. Just being around them, shit. I feel like myself again."

"It's kinda late," Butters says. "But I'll come tomorrow, how's that?"

"Okay. I'll get Wendy to come over again, too. She went home, but she was with us earlier, and - God, I think she feels something, too. We all feel it. You will, too, Butters, I swear. It's like things are right again. Or close to being right."

"Eric said you came to the station," Butters says, most interested in discussing this aspect of the story, since he can't really get his head around the rest of it at the moment. He is glad to hear that Wendy and Kenny are talking again. He smiles to himself, wondering if that's the real reason Kenny sounds so happy.

"Yeah, we came to the station," Kenny says, some of the glee draining from his tone. "At first I just wanted to show him up, because he can say he doesn't believe me all he wants, but if me and Wendy feel like this around them, I knew he would, too. And it freaked him out, I could tell, and I thought that was all I wanted, but then I saw that trophy case in his office."

"He said something about a little league trophy?"

"Yeah! The fucking little league trophy from when we were nine, when we won the district championship or whatever. I know you don't remember it, but Stan and Kyle were on our team, too. Of course Cartman managed to keep the fucking trophy for himself, but we all touched it, because our parents all took pictures of us holding it. Do you know what that means, Butters?"

"No?" Butters says. Kenny sounds more than a little unhinged now, and Butters wishes he hadn't turned the lights out in the kitchen before making this call, because he's starting to feel scared.

"Their fingerprints would be on it!" Kenny says. "Their child-sized fingerprints, and if Cartman would just agree to unlock his fucking trophy case and send the thing in for fucking analysis, that would _prove_ that I'm right, not just to him but to Wendy, and to Stan and Kyle, and it would be, it would be like the first important piece of the puzzle, but of course Cartman wouldn't agree to do it, that fucking asshole."

Kenny has gone from sounding happy and relieved to sounding furious and deranged a little too quickly, and if Butters didn't know him better he might suspect he was on something. There's no slur in his voice, and Butters never knew him to bother answering a phone call when he was high, but he's edgy with some kind of stimulant, maybe just sheer mystery-solving adrenaline.

"Could you talk to him?" Kenny asks. Butters knew that was coming, and he hugs his knees tighter, wincing. "Could you ask him to do this? For you? I mean, he owes you a billion fucking favors, right?"

"I don't know, Kenny," Butters says. "I'd love to help you guys out, but he was pretty upset about all this when he came home tonight." Butters clamps his lips shut. He shouldn't have said that.

"Upset?" Kenny says, and Butters can almost hear his eyes narrowing with interest. "Yeah? What did he say?"

"Nothing," Butters says. "He was just in a bad mood." He can't explain to Kenny that Eric was more upset about the idea of Butters buying into Kenny's credibility and therefore deciding Kenny had been right about Eric all along, too. Eric doesn't want anyone to know that he worries about that, especially Kenny, and Butters has always been willing to keep his secret.

"In a bad mood, was he?" Kenny says. "Yeah? Did he take it out on you?"

"Uh." Butters puts his hand over his mouth to contain nervous laughter. Eric did, in a way, and it was pretty great, but that's another thing he doesn't feel comfortable sharing with Kenny. "No, but he went to bed without dinner."

"Holy shit." Kenny is back to sounding delighted. "Cartman skipping a meal? He must have been even more rattled than I thought."

"Now, Kenny," Butters says, sighing. He hates being in this position. "You really shouldn't try to pick on him too bad. I know he can be kind of tough to deal with, but -"

"Don't talk to me about Cartman's feelings right now, please," Kenny says. "I've got two people here who don't remember the first ten years of their lives, Butters. They grew up without their parents, without each other, and I'm getting the impression that their lives were pretty awful for awhile there. If Cartman has any kind of clue as to what happened to them, it's fucking criminal of him to keep it from them. If he wants to be a dick to me, fine. But think about these guys, what they've lost. All he has to do is unlock his goddamn trophy case and let Clyde run a test on the fingerprints. Clyde was excited about it, I could tell. Cartman is the only one trying to shut this whole thing down. It makes me wonder why he's so invested."

"What are you saying?" Butters asks. "You think Eric did something bad?"

"Is it really that hard to believe?" Kenny asks. "I know you - have feeling for him." Butters imagines him cringing as he admits this. "But you know him, Butters. You know he stops at nothing when he wants something."

"Kenny," Butters says. He closes his eyes and holds his hand over his face. "I'm so confused. What do you think Eric did?"

"I don't know," Kenny says, groaning. "And I don't mean to upset you. I know Cartman isn't some kind of wizard who can erase memories, but I can't shake the feeling that he was involved. Will you at least ask him if he'll let us test that trophy? I could break into his office and smash the glass - and I'll do it if I have to - but I'd really rather not end up in jail and be at his mercy."

"No, Kenny, don't do that!" Butters covers his face again when he thinks of how badly that would go. If he wasn't holding the phone he'd be rubbing his fists together. "I'll try to talk to him. Maybe he just needs to cool down a little bit. You know he doesn't like being proved wrong."

"Yeah, I know," Kenny says. "The only thing Cartman fucking cares about is being proved right. And getting what he wants. And eating." There's a pause. "And you, I guess. In his way."

"I gotta go," Butters says, the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of stomach growing stronger. "I'll ask him, though, Kenny. I promise."

"Thanks, Butters." Kenny sighs. "I wish you were here," he says. "This dinner Kyle's cooking smells really good. And you'd love Stan and Kyle - I mean, you did love them, like I did. You'll remember. Some part of you will, I swear, you'll see. They're good people, Butters. Like you."

"I'll come over tomorrow," Butters says. He allows himself to wonder if he wishes he was there, too. It would be fun, just hanging out in a group where nobody was dressed in fetish gear, having dinner that he didn't cook himself. He can't remember the last time he did that.

"Sleep tight, alright?" Kenny says. "And good luck with Cartman."

Those words feel a little foreboding after Butters has hung up the phone. He's heard Kenny say a lot of things about Eric over the years, but he's never had Kenny wish him luck in dealing with him before. For some reason, it's hitting Butters harder than any of Kenny's warnings ever did.

Butters sets the house alarm and puts out the lights, the darkness on the lower level of the house making the rooms feel sinister and unfamiliar. He hurries for the stairs and back into the bedroom, expecting to see Eric still slumped horizontally across the bed, snoring under that blanket, but when Butters gets there Eric is sitting up, squinting and frowning like he just woke up. Butters should have been quieter when he made his way up the stairs.

"I thought you were bringing me cookies," Eric says.

"Oh - sorry - I wasn't sure you wanted any. I'll go grab some."

"No, forget it," Eric says when Butters turns toward the door. "C'mere."

He holds his arms out and Butters hurries into them, glad that he's awake. Kenny's conversation scared him in more ways than one, and he doesn't want to be alone right now. He clambers into Eric's lap and lets Eric rub his hands up and down his sides, like Butters is a fire that he's warming himself by.

"Where'd you go for so long?" Eric asks.

"I was just downstairs cleaning up." Butters doesn't want to lie to him, but he doesn't want to get into it about what Kenny said, not now. "I thought you were sleeping."

"I was." Eric frowns. "But I can tell when you're not here. When I'm sleeping. It feels different. Why are you shaking?"

"Am I shaking?" Butters laughs nervously, and Eric's gaze sharpens, the distracted sleepiness evaporating.

"What's wrong?" he asks. "You're giving me that look."

"What look?"

"That look like you burned a casserole and you don't want to tell me."

Butters sighs and puts his hands on Eric's chest. He can feel the warmth of him through his shirt, and he just wants to lie down and get spooned up against it, but he can't lie to Eric when he's looking him in the eye like this.

"I talked to Kenny," he says. "On the phone just now."

"What?" Eric has a wide variety of angry expressions, but this is the one that startles Butters the most. He's looking at Butters like suddenly he doesn't know who the fuck Butters is. "What the hell do you mean? You called him?"

"Yeah," Butters says, whining, trying to appear as pathetic as possible, though he has a feeling it won't work tonight. "I just – I was wondering about those boys. Stan and Kyle."

"Don't say those fucking names to me," Eric says, shoving Butters out of his lap. Butters didn't want to get emotional over this, but his eyes are already wet, an automatic reaction to the feeling of being pushed away by Eric.

"Why not?" Butters asks. "Eric, what's going on? Kenny – he was saying all this stuff –"

"That's it," Eric says, clambering out of bed. He tucks his dick back into his pants and pulls them up higher, buttoning the fly. "I didn't want to have to do this, 'cause we're gonna have to take the car out to Conifer for service, but I'm putting my fucking foot down. You're forbidden from seeing Kenny."

"What?" Butters says. He can't remember the last time he had the nerve to narrow his eyes at Eric, maybe never, but he can't seem to help it now.

"And you're not talking to him on the phone, either," Eric says. "Or emailing him, or sending fucking carrier pigeons. I'm sick of him filling your head with bullshit."

"Why won't you let them test that trophy for fingerprints?" Butters asks, his tears drying up as he starts to get angry for real. "What are you afraid of?"

Eric stares at him for a moment, stunned, then huffs an angry laugh.

"You're going to question me in my own house?" he says. He shakes his head slowly. "I don't think so. Get your pants off. You're about to have the spanking of your fucking life."

"No!" Butters says. His face gets hot and his heart starts slamming, because this is brand new. He's never refused a spanking before, maybe because he's always been secretly, stupidly glad when Eric offered one. Not now. "This isn't a game, Eric! This is serious, and you – you have to tell me what's going on!"

Eric is quiet for a moment, and it's scary, because Butters doesn't know what happens next. He's always followed Eric's rules, mostly because he wanted to, but also because he's been afraid to face this moment, their foundation crumbling, the road map gone.

"So Kenny convinced you that he's right," Eric says.

"No, just –"

"Do you know how pathetic that makes you? Huh? How gullible and useless and –"

"Eric, please, I don't –"

"Whatever," Eric says, holding up a hand to silence him. "I'm taking a shower. I don't think I'll be able to sleep with the scent of somebody so naïve and fucking worthless on me. You can sleep right there," he says, pointing. "At the foot of the bed."

"No," Butters says, fighting the urge to break down. He doesn't want to sob and wail and beg, though this actually hurts worse, breaking apart everything they've built. He's just tired, so tired of pretending that they're both still asleep. "I'm not sleeping at the foot of the bed," Butters says, climbing out of it. "If you don't want to sleep with the s-smell of me, I'll just go downstairs and sleep on the couch." He regrets it as soon as he's said it. It was scary down there, dark and too quiet. Eric gapes at him, then nods, pretending to laugh. Still pretending, no matter what Butters does. He knew it would be this way if he ever told Eric what he already knows, that he's been awake this whole time. It's why he's been so careful to keep his eyes shut.

"That's good, that's fine!" Eric says. "What the fuck do I care? More room in the bed for me!" His voice is tight, though he doesn't sound anywhere as near to crying as Butters. Butters is trembling with the effort to keep it together as he grabs a blanket and Clyde Frog.

"'Ey!" Eric says. "Where do you think you're going with him? That's mine."

"Fine," Butters says, gritting his teeth to keep his tears in as he sets Clyde Frog back on the bed. He was hoping he wouldn't have to be completely alone down there in the dark, but he's not going to bed Eric for a stuffed toy. Until Eric is honest with him about whatever's going on, he's not going to beg for anything.

Downstairs, with his face buried in the couch cushions, he lets himself cry hard, keeping it quiet. He learned how to cry without making a sound while he was living with his parents. He never thought he'd have to use his talent for doing so here, but he's been so stupid. He knew this was coming, that they couldn't keep pretending forever.

He's still awake when he hears Eric's footsteps on the landing, then the stairs. Butters sucks his breath in silently, keeping his eyes closed. He's afraid, sincerely scared of what Eric might do to him. That's never been true before; even when they were little, when Eric would creep across the bedroom to sneak his hands into Butters' pajamas, Butters was always more excited than scared. Now he's terrified, because breaking the spell that he let Eric cast might have turned him into something else, the monster that Butters' complacency kept caged.

Eric stands over him, and Butters doesn't move, his eyes still closed. He hopes Eric won't see his eyelids trembling, that he won't know, this time, that Butters is only pretending to sleep. He feels something settle over his feet, then his shoulder. A blanket. He's relieved for a moment, but then Eric takes hold of his arm, lifts it, and Butters holds his breath.

Something slips against his chest, under his arm. Butters recognizes the smell and feel of worn felt after just half a second: Clyde Frog. Eric lowers his arm again, and Butters lets out his breath, soft and silent, fighting the urge to pinch his eyelids more tightly over the tears that are gathering. He can hear Eric trying to keep quiet, too, but Eric was never as good at pretending as Butters was. He reaches down to smooth Butters' hair away from his forehead, sighs, and then he's gone, walking back up the stairs.

When he's sure that Eric is back in the bedroom, Butters winces and squeezes around Clyde Frog, the sob that can't come out of him pinching his whole body into a comma before the tension drains out of him in a painfully thin breath. He kisses Clyde Frog, shaking, wishing he hadn't tested the delicate balance of his life with Eric. He's spoiled everything. In the morning, things will be different. Tonight, alone in the dark, wiping at his wet cheeks, he wishes those boys had never come back.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N**: I'm back from vacation, so onward with the second half of the story! Hooray for a new episode tomorrow ~ I just hope they won't twist things so much that I have to rework my plot here. ;)

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><p>Stan never thought he would be sitting in the parking lot of a plastic surgeon's office, nervously anticipating his appointment and sipping coffee alongside a supposed ex-girlfriend he doesn't remember, but he's beginning to become accustomed to the unexpected. He also never thought he'd be gay, and certainly never thought that his boyfriend would be the one source of normalcy and comfort in his otherwise distressing life. He never thought he'd ask to go on hiatus from his job during an awkward phone call that probably angered his employer greatly, and he never thought he'd be happy to borrow a stranger's bed in a dingy apartment where he can hear things moving inside the walls at night, but he's grateful to Kenny for sleeping on the couch so that Kyle and Stan can use his bed. He's not sure why someone who didn't actually know him would do this. He did feel something when they met Kenny in the garage that day, and continues to feel comfortable with him. Kyle still looks at Kenny askance, but he's become friendly with Kenny's younger sister, maybe just because Kyle has reverted to full on agoraphobia mode and spends all day in that apartment with her. Kyle was against Stan coming here, to Tom's Rhinoplasty, but Stan couldn't wait any longer.<p>

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Wendy asks. She reminds Stan of Kyle, particularly when she gets protective and defensive of Kenny, which usually happens in response to some underhanded accusation Kyle makes while being protective and defensive of Stan.

"Yeah," Stan says. He's not actually sure that he wants to do this, but he's become too antsy to sit around that apartment all day, waiting for Kenny to figure out a way to steal a little league trophy from that policeman's office. "I just have to know. I can't sleep, 'cause, like. What if it really is her?"

Wendy looks worried. She still doesn't fully believe that Kenny knows what the hell he's talking about, and Stan doesn't either. He just knows that this whole town feels not quite familiar but vaguely enchanted, like a dream that he's allowed to wander into while awake.

"I can't imagine what you must be going through," Wendy says. "All this uncertainty. I wish I could tell you I was sure Kenny is right."

"You must think he could be," Stan says. "Or you'd just - I mean, you wouldn't indulge him if you were sure he was crazy, right?"

Wendy rolls her eyes, but her exasperation doesn't seem to be directed at Stan. She drinks coffee and looks out the window.

"It's a long story," she says. "I mean, Kenny is a long story. I'd caution you to keep in mind that he might be imagining things."

"You don't want us to ignore him, though," Stan says. "Do you?"

"No, I guess not. Just, um. In the interest of full disclosure, I have some personal investment in this. In him, I mean."

"Was he your boyfriend, too?" Stan asks, and she laughs.

"No, no," she says. "No. But apparently you were. Isn't that funny? That he believes that?"

"I guess," Stan says. "But I don't think it really counts if neither of us remembers."

"Yeah, probably not." Wendy looks at the clock on the car's dash. "Five minutes until your appointment."

"Oh, shit, you're right." Stan puts his empty coffee cup in the holder between their seats. "Um, can you tell me anything? About her? Like, what to expect?"

"Well," Wendy says. "She's really sweet. She's worked for my dad - with him, I mean - since I was a kid, and she's always been nice to me whenever I'm in the office. She got divorced awhile back, but it wasn't a bad divorce or anything, and from what I remember her husband - um, Randy - he was pretty nice, too, just kind of childish."

"She didn't remarry?" Stan asks. His hands are squeezed around his knees as he stares at the building, his stomach pitching and whining the way it used to before adoption interviews. He has to keep reminding himself that he's not going in there to ask Sharon Marsh to adopt him. As far as she knows, he's just a guy who wants a nose job.

"No, she didn't remarry," Wendy says. "And my dad, well. He's always trying to fix her up with guys, but she brushes him off. I really admire her, you know? She's confident with herself, she doesn't need - I mean, I just think about what I would be like, if I got divorced, if I was stuck in South Park alone -" She laughs nervously, picking at the rim on her Tweak Brothers coffee cup. Apparently she and her husband own the company. It was pretty good coffee, though Stan wouldn't really know, since he usually doesn't drink the stuff. He tries to come up with something to say, wanting to rescue her from that line of thinking. He hasn't met her husband yet. Kenny has implied that he's strange but harmless.

"I guess I should head in there," Stan says, putting his hand on the door. "I, um, I like it when patients arrive early, you know, for paperwork." He couldn't believe it when Kenny told him that his supposed mother is a nurse, too. He actually broke down over it, though later, in private, with Kyle wrapped around him. Kyle begged him not to come here, afraid he'd end up disappointed. Stan is afraid, too, but he's more scared of the idea that this woman might actually be his mother, and that he could miss his chance to know her.

"Good luck," Wendy says, and she winces as if she's afraid that was insensitive. "You'll be fine. She's great, even if, um. I'll be here when you're done, right here in the car."

"Thanks, Wendy," Stan says, and when they smile at each other he wonders if she feels it, too, that tug of something familial and safe.

Stan lifts his shoulders as he walks toward the building, still unaccustomed to the cold mountain air. It was cold when he left Akron, but this is different; the wind bites at his skin, and he's already thinking of returning to that junky but warm little apartment where Kyle is waiting, chewing his nails off while he wonders how this will go for Stan. The thought that Kyle will be there for him afterward, no matter what, gives Stan the courage to pull open the door of Tom's Rhinoplasty and step into the small front waiting room.

There's a woman sitting at a desk on the far side of the room, and as soon as she looks up and smiles, Stan knows that she's Sharon Marsh. She's just as Wendy described her: friendly smile, short brown hair, burgundy scrubs. There's nobody else in the waiting room, and Stan is afraid she'll laugh at his obvious hopefulness when she gets up to greet him, but she just keeps smiling until she gets close, when her eyes land on Stan's nose and a little frown pinches between her eyebrows.

"Oh - I - are you my nine o'clock?" she asks, frowning more deeply.

"Um, yeah." Stan puts a hand out awkwardly. "Stan Emerson." His last name feels clunky and misshapen on his tongue, but that's nothing new.

"Ah - oh, okay." She shakes his hand; hers is small and cool against Stan's sweaty palm. "I'm Sharon - c'mon over, I'll get your paperwork started."

Stan has never been inside a plastic surgery office before, and he's surprised that it smells just like Dr. Harper's office, that combination of gauze and antibacterial ointment that makes him feel at home in a way that nothing else does, except Kyle when he's freshly showered and wrapped in wool blankets. Stan sits in a chair across from Sharon's desk and accepts a clipboard with medical forms.

"I'm sorry, I had you down for a cosmetic rhinoplasty consultation," Sharon says when Stan looks up from the HOME ADDRESS field, his mind blanking already. "You must, um. Do you have a deviated septum?"

"No," Stan says. "Just, um. This is just for looks."

"But." She frowns again. "Um, never mind. Is this - have you had plastic surgery before?"

"Nope," Stan says. "First time." He's sweating badly now, studying her face. Her nose looks remarkably - disturbingly - like his, and he must be insulting her by suggesting that he wants his altered. He gets back to the forms when she just watches him, her lips slightly parted and her brow furrowed like she can't remember what she wanted to say.

"Are you new in town?" she asks. "Or just here to see Dr. Testaburger?"

"Um," Stan says, not sure how he should answer. "I'm visiting, and, uh, my friend recommended him."

"Your friend told you that you needed rhinoplasty?" Sharon asks. She sounds angry. Stan fidgets in his chair. She probably suspects something, and he doesn't blame her. He feels like he's come here to steal something from her, memories he hasn't earned.

"No," Stan says. "I just want it. I mean. I don't know."

"You don't know?" Sharon raises her eyebrows. "Okay. I was afraid to sound unprofessional, but if you're having doubts. Honey. You don't need rhinoplasty. You have a beautiful face."

Stan's eyes get wet so fast that he doesn't have time to blink the tears back. He tries to smile, but that only pushes the sob that's lodged in his throat up fully. He covers his face with his hand, embarrassed, and Sharon makes a sad little sound as she hurries to his side.

"Shh, it's alright," she says, kneeling down beside his chair. The sound of her voice, that reassurance that Stan wants to badly to accept, only makes him cry harder, though he tries to keep it quiet, horrified with himself. He's blowing this. He never blew a meeting with potential parents this badly, not even when he was eleven years old.

"I'm sorry," he says, trying to get his voice under control, though it's useless. "I'm sorry, I'm so -"

"It's okay - oh - sweetheart." Suddenly her voice is pinched up, too, and Stan feels terrible. The last thing he wanted was to make her cry. He accepts a box of tissues that she grabs from her desk, and she falls into the chair next to his, sniffling and wiping at her own eyes. "Gosh, I don't know what's wrong with me," she says, forcing a laugh. "I'm being awfully unprofessional."

"No, it's okay," Stan says. He wipes his face with a clumsy handful of tissues, tears still coming. "I'm just being an idiot, I'm sorry -"

"Can I get you something to drink?" Sharon asks. She reaches over to squeeze his arm. "Some water, or some coffee?"

"I've already had a bunch of coffee," Stan says, because this seems like something she should be aware of, maybe just because she's a nurse.

"How about some hot chocolate?" she asks. She rubs his arm a little, as if to warm him up. "I've only got Swiss Miss packets, but -"

"I love Swiss Miss," Stan says, smiling shakily. "That'd be awesome, thanks."

Stan tries to get his emotions under control as she crosses the room to a refreshment station against the wall. His chest is doing a trembling thing that makes him feel too young, right back to the interview room at the group home, where he regularly puked into the little black trashcan by the door after interviews. Never _during_ interviews, though. He used to be so good at acting normal when he needed to.

"I don't know what's gotten into me," Sharon says, still sniffling when she returns with Stan's cocoa. "I'm usually good at this, um - with emotional situations. You just -" She stares at Stan for a moment, worrying a used tissue between her hands as he blows on his cocoa. "You have a very unusual eye color. You actually look a lot like my ex-husband did when he was younger-oh, God, sorry." She pinches the bridge of her nose. "This is the height of unprofessionalism, Jesus."

"No, really, it's okay," Stan says. He's never considered his eye color unusual, though when he thinks about it, he can't remember ever meeting anyone else with dark blue eyes, only lighter shades. "I know how it is, I mean. It's part of why I like being a nurse. Like, empathizing."

"You're a nurse?" Sharon sits down in the chair beside him, passing him the tissues again. Stan dabs at his eyes, which are mostly dry now.

"Yeah," he says. "I work for an ear and throat guy up in Ohio."

"Ohio? Wow, you came a long way. You said you were visiting a friend?"

"Uh-huh." Stan tries to think fast, wondering how he should respond. "Um, Kenny McCormick."

"Oh." Sharon looks surprised. "Kenny? That's funny. He's my mechanic. How do you two know each other?"

"Um." Stan thinks about the few things he knows about Kenny from the past few days. He didn't go to college, but he did go to rehab. They talked about it in the context of the nurses Kenny loved and hated there. "From, um. Treatment."

Sharon says nothing, just nods with understanding and reaches over to touch Stan's wrist. He's never been glad to be with someone who isn't shy about physical expressions of concern, aside from Kyle. This is different, obviously, but no less comforting.

"Is Kenny doing okay?" she asks, and Stan gets the feeling she's really asking about him, though why would she be? They don't know each other. Except for the fact that they do, and he can feel it, and that feeling is threatening to make his eyes overflow again.

"Kenny's fine," Stan says. He drinks cocoa, trying to calm down. "So, um. Why did you want to become a nurse?"

"Hmm, well." Sharon releases his arm and sits back to think about the question. "I just always appreciated the kind ones. When I was in labor with my daughter, there was this awful nurse - it was about three o'clock in the morning when I went in, and my husband was a frantic mess, I was terrified, and this nurse was giving us an attitude like we were bothering her. Then the shift change came at six in the morning, and the nurse who took over was so sweet. It makes such a big difference, you know, when a person is going through something scary? I didn't really mean to end up in a plastic surgery ward, but people are so judgmental about plastic surgery, and the patients who feel like they need it deserve to be treated with care, too. That's become important to me." She fusses with the tissue again, looking a little embarrassed. "How about you?"

"I was raised in an orphanage," Stan says, blurting this. His face gets red, but he can't go back now. "Nurses, um, they helped me. So, yeah, same thing. I wanted to be one of those people. Who helps."

"You lost your parents?" Sharon says, reaching over to touch his arm again. Stan shakes his head.

"I think they lost me," he says, his voice getting quieter with every word. Sharon takes her hand from his arm and brings it up to cover her mouth. Stan's eyes blur with fresh tears, until his vision of her looks like the indistinct image he always held on to, the mother he couldn't remember.

"Um, excuse me, I just." Sharon gets up from her chair and turns her back to Stan, but she doesn't get far before looking at him again. "Your name is Stan?"

"Yeah," he says. He wipes his eyes clear, and she still looks like his mother, though it's not something he can see so much as something he can feel in every shallow breath he's taking.

"It's just something my daughter said once." Sharon's lip shakes, her brow furrowing, and she makes a little sound of disbelief, taking another step backward. "She had her wisdom teeth out when she was nineteen, and I was there when she was coming off the anesthesia. She said - ah." Sharon looks away from him, toward the door, then back again. "She asked me where Stan was. And I wouldn't have thought anything of it, because that could have been a boyfriend I didn't know about, anybody, she was so out of it. But it didn't seem like she was asking where he was right then. She was sad, she was upset, and it was like she was asking about a toy she'd lost ten years ago, something she'd been missing for a long time, and I just broke down, I don't know why, but I broke down crying-"

She turns away from him again, and Stan gets out of his chair, setting the cocoa mug on her desk.

"I'm sorry," he says, shaking so badly that he's not sure he'll be able to walk, though he's got to try, to leave this poor woman alone. "I'll go, I didn't mean-"

"Wait, no!" She turns back and stretches her hand out to him. "Don't go, please, I just. I don't understand what's happening."

She wraps her arms around herself, and Stan knows he should flee, but he can't. He moans and walks toward her, hugging her hard and hoping she won't hate him for it. He can't explain this, either, but he doesn't seem to need to. Her arms go around him easily, and they're both holding on tight, wiping their wet faces on each other's shoulders.

"Sorry, I'm sorry," Stan says, and he's pretty sure he's apologizing for hugging her, though she's hugging him back, so tightly, her hands closing into fists against his back.

"Don't be sorry," she says. "Let's just, let's. Let's think."

But Stan can't think, can't access these memories, if that's what they are. He wonders if this is what it's like to meet someone you knew in a past life. He's not even sure he believes in past lives, but he's got to start believing in impossible things, because Kenny was right about Sharon Marsh, and Christophe was right about him and Kyle. Thinking this, Stan sucks in his breath and pulls back. Sitting inside this warm little doctor's office, comforted by the nearness of this woman who has his exact same nose, he managed to forget Christophe's fate and what it might mean for anyone else involved in this inexplicable mess.

"I have to go," Stan says, wiping his face with the back of his hand. "I - I changed my mind about the nose job."

"Oh, um, good." Sharon nods and clears her eyes, taking a deep breath. "You don't need it, really. Your nose is adorable. Oh, God, I'm sorry - again - it's just -"

"Don't be sorry." Stan gives her the best smile he can manage, shaky but real. "It was great to meet you."

"You, too," Sharon says. She smiles back and walks to her desk. "Here, let me give you my card. If you need anything, um. If you want to talk more about nursing, or anything, I'm here every weekday."

"Kay. Thanks-" He stops himself from saying _Mom_, and though he didn't even get the start of a syllable out, he feels like she heard it, her eyes getting a little wider. A bell rings behind them, and they both jump.

"Morning - ah, everything okay?" The man who's walked in stands just inside the door, shrugging off his overcoat. He's got faded red hair and a rather imperfect nose. He must be Wendy's father, the doctor; Stan remembers a comment she made about the fact that he's never gotten his own nose 'fixed.'

"Everything's fine," Sharon says, and her voice sounds remarkably steady. She squeezes Stan's arm. "Take care, Stanley," she says. "And tell Kenny I said hello."

"Kay." His voice is a little higher in her presence, smaller. He remembers this happening with the nuns who were particularly indulgent of him. "I will."

"How long will you be in town?" she asks when Stan starts to walk toward the door. There's something desperate in the question, as if she's begging him not to tell her that he's leaving soon.

"For awhile, I think," Stan says. He wasn't sure if that was true before this morning. He's had a bad feeling since they came here, and it hasn't quite dissipated, but he can't leave now. This woman, standing in the middle of a plastic surgeon's office and looking at him like she can't bear to watch him go: she's his mother. Kenny was right. Stan feels like he'll fall over, or vomit, or both. He waves and hurries away before he can, giving Wendy's father a polite nod as he passes him.

He doesn't really remember walking to Wendy's car or climbing into the passenger's seat, but suddenly he's there, managing to get his hands over his face before he starts sobbing again. He's not even sure why he's crying, but maybe he's just overwhelmed, too much nervous energy coursing through his body and exiting through his tear ducts. He can't remember ever feeling this hopeful and horrified at the same time.

"Oh, God," Wendy says, rubbing his back. "Was it - was she -"

"Can we go, please?" Stan asks, not lifting his head. His forehead is resting on his knees, because this is what the nuns taught him to do when he felt like throwing up was imminent.

"Sure, yeah." Wendy starts the car and pulls out fast, like they're making a getaway after a bank robbery. Stan appreciates that, though he also feels a sense of loss as they drive away from Tom's Rhinoplasty. He's able to get his crying under control pretty quickly, but the feeling of queasiness persists.

"Damn Kenny for this," Wendy says, squeezing the steering wheel like she wants to hurt it. "I never should have let him -"

"No, Kenny was right," Stan says. He raises his head slowly and clutches the handle on the passenger side door, wishing the world would stop tilting around his ears. "She - that was my mother. That was her, and she knew it, too."

"Are you serious?" Wendy brakes too hard at a red light, and Stan clutches his stomach, swallowing down some coffee and cocoa flavored bile. "Then why'd you go running out of there?"

"Because it wasn't, like - we couldn't put it into words! I don't know, I don't know," Stan says, and he starts crying again, just in frustrated huffs now.

"Okay, alright." Wendy pats his back. "Do you want to go back to Kenny's?"

"I guess," Stan says. "I - can we go somewhere else first, though? I don't want Kyle to see me like this." Stan already feels bad enough for breaking down at Kyle's parents' house, over that box of old clothes. He needs Kyle to believe that he can handle this, because things are only going to get weirder from here on out. That's become pretty clear.

"We could go back to my place," Wendy says. "I could make you some tea. My husband's at work."

"Yeah," Stan says. He sniffles. "Thanks. Hey, listen. Are you just doing this for Kenny? Or is there any part of you that, ah. Like. Recognizes me?"

"Oh, God, I don't know." Wendy reaches over to smooth Stan's bangs back down. "I do feel something for you. I don't know if it's recognition. It's more like you're some cousin I never met before, but something about you feels familiar because you're family. Which I think is how I'd feel about most people in South Park if I met them as an adult. It's not like I recognize you, it's like - I recognize South Park in you." She groans. "Which makes no sense."

"I give up on this making sense," Stan says.

"Yeah? Well it's going to have to, at some point, if we ever want to figure out what happened to you guys."

Stan turns to look out the window at the town that Wendy recognizes in him, no longer sure that he needs or wants to figure out what happened to him and Kyle. He wishes he could believe that Christophe killed himself and Kyle simply can't accept that, but he's pretty sure that the bad feeling that's taken up residence in his gut has to do with the fact that he thinks Kyle is right. Someone murdered Christophe and tried to cover it up. Someone is trying to cover up what happened to them, and they're willing to kill for it.

Stan expected Wendy's house to be more modest, since they're the same age, but she is also married and the co-owner of a company, so he supposes he shouldn't be surprised that she's got a large, two-story house in what seems like one of the more affluent South Park neighborhoods. There is something about the house that looks a little worn, though it has the potential to be impressive. There's a FOR SALE sign in the front yard.

"Are you thinking about moving out of South Park?" Stan asks.

"Oh, not really," Wendy says. "I think everyone expected me to be the one to move away, but. None of us did, and I can't imagine living somewhere else. Me and my husband are just trying to downsize a little."

"You said everyone stayed?" Stan follows her into the foyer when she's unlocked the door. The foyer is clean and neat with hardwood floors, and something about the house feels too quiet.

"What can I say?" Wendy drops her keys into a china dish on a side table as she leads Stan into the kitchen. "We're small town kids. I guess the real world intimidates us."

Stan sits at Wendy's kitchen table and wonders what Kyle would be like if he'd grown up in a small town, if he'd never traveled the world or had a book written about him. He watches Wendy make tea, feeling cozier in the house's open kitchen, which smells like coffee and overripe bananas.

"You can take your coat off," Wendy says, smiling like she finds it charming that he hasn't yet. Stan unbuttons his coat and lets it hang over the back of his chair.

"So your husband is at the coffee shop?" Stan says when Wendy brings him a cup of tea. He doesn't really like tea, but he likes that she made it for him without asking if he wanted it, and the heat of the mug feels good against his hands, which are still shaking a little.

"No, Tweek doesn't work at the shop anymore," Wendy says. She pulls out a chair and sits down across from Stan with her own steaming mug. "He works at the library. It's just a way for him to pass the time. The coffee shop stresses him out too much."

"But you guys own it?"

"Well, yeah. It's never really felt like ours, though, since we just inherited it. His parents founded the company, but they died when we were in high school."

"Jesus. Both of them?"

"Yeah, in a car accident." Wendy looks down into her tea mug, watching the steam curl upward. "It was terrible. Poor Tweek. No one - he - his friends at the time weren't really mature enough to help him through it. Token might have been, but his family had moved away by then. Token was my boyfriend, um, for awhile, in high school. I think I took care of Tweek as a favor to him. Then, you know. Me and Tweek got married."

Stan nods, getting the feeling that he shouldn't ask any questions about the progress of their romance. He sips his tea, and the taste is pretty gross, but the hot water feels good against his lips.

"Kenny went to high school with you, too?" he says. Wendy huffs.

"Sort of," she says. "Kenny, oh - where do I even start? He went sort of crazy when we were kids. Or so we all thought, when he started talking about you guys."

"Me and Kyle?"

"Yeah. It was really hard to watch, the way he got. Though I never really knew him before he started raving about you two. He used to wear this big, hooded parka all the time, and he kind of hid inside it. He never talked to me until he got so determined to make me believe his story about the missing boys. I don't even think I knew what color his hair was before that." She looks away from Stan, blowing on her tea.

"Why would he be the only one who remembered us?" Stan asks. "How could that possibly happen?"

"I don't know," Wendy says. She groans and leans down to put her elbow on the table. "There's something you have to understand about Kenny. He's always had this - thing. That nobody can put their finger on. I guess most people just think he's nuts or a druggie, but I've always thought that behavior was a symptom of something else. For awhile I thought it was his upbringing - um, he grew up poor, his parents were addicts, it was awful. But there's something else, too. It's like - if you'd asked me who in town would be the most likely person to come up with this whole story about disappearing boys, well. Actually, I might have said Butters, but Kenny would a close second, just because of his sort of, like, otherworldly aspects."

"Who's Butters?" Stan asks.

"Remember that police chief guy who Kenny almost lost it on?"

"Yeah."

"Butters is his boyfriend."

"Oh."

Wendy laughs at Stan's expression, and Stan feels stupid. He's still not good at picking out who other gay people are, being new to the experience himself. He never would have guessed that blowhard police chief had a boyfriend, at least not openly.

"Cartman and Butters," Wendy says, shaking her head. "They're simultaneously the most dysfunctional and the most stable couple in South Park. They've been together - God. Since elementary school? Or anyway, that's when Butters started following Cartman around like a puppy. If you picture pretty much the exact opposite of Cartman, that's Butters. He's sweet, and he always did well in school, though if you ask me he's dumb as hell in all practical senses. I shouldn't say that, though - he's pretty brave. His parents were unbelievably controlling, but he stood up to them so he could be with Cartman. Though, actually, he might have just been bending to Cartman's will rather than theirs. Anyway, Kenny worries about him. Me and Butters were the ones who helped Kenny get into rehab when he was younger. Kenny and Butters are very protective of each other."

"And you?" Stan says.

"Um, well," Wendy says. She puts her mug down and runs her tongue over her teeth. "Me and Butters sort of lost touch when he got so heavily involved with Cartman. And Kenny. I don't know. What happened, when he was using - it was pretty intense. Butters can do intense without batting an eye. Kenny and me, um. It was harder for us, afterward. After things changed."

"I thought you guys were together," Stan says, blurting this into the awkward silence that follows. "You and Kenny. When I met you, at the garage."

Wendy laughs a little too hard, rolling her tea mug back and forth between her hands. Stan had been sure they were a couple that day, from the way Wendy hovered at Kenny's shoulder and the way Kenny held her face when they were talking on the other side of the garage. Stan's face gets hot when he realizes they might be having an affair, and that he should shut up and mind his own business.

"No, no," Wendy says. "We're barely even - I mean - we're friends, but - it's -"

The front door opens and Stan startles, still on edge from the coffee and his earlier experience. Wendy looks surprised, too. Stan is relieved to see that it's just Kenny, until he realizes that it isn't Kenny but a blond man of similar height who is unbuttoning an over-sized coat. As soon as the man sets eyes on Stan, he screams and reels backward.

"Tweek!" Wendy says, hopping up from her chair. "What's the matter with you?"

"Juh- Jesus!" Tweek says, his eyes still wide as he stares at Stan, who stands from his chair, hopeful that someone else in South Park might remember him. His hope fades as the recognition seems to drain from Tweek's expression. He still looks a bit like Kenny to Stan, though his eyes are completely different, nervous and slightly wild. Tweek slumps against the wall, breathing hard. "Sorry," he says to Stan. "Ah - shit - I thought you were Craig!"

"Craig?" Wendy frowns and walks to Tweek, helping him out of his coat. "Why would that asshole be in our house?"

"Ah - uh, exactly!" Tweek says. He's fidgeting, badly shaken, his eyes darting back and forth from Wendy to Stan. "So, um, who is this?"

"This is Kenny's friend, the one I was telling you about," Wendy says. She hangs Tweek's coat on a peg in the hallway and brings him over to the table as if he's incapable of walking without guidance, which, based on his demeanor, might actually be the case. "The one who was supposed to have disappeared," Wendy says as she pulls out a chair for Tweek.

"Oh, shit, Jesus!" Tweek says. He backs into Wendy, not sitting. "They're real? I knew it! Is he human? No offense," Tweek says his eyes darting back to Stan's.

"None taken," Stan asks. He wonders if Tweek is having a bad reaction to some medication. Wendy seems to be taking his hysteria in stride.

"Calm down," Wendy says, gently pushing on Tweek's shoulders until his ass has hit the chair. "Of course he's human, look at him. Does he seem familiar at all to you? Aside from looking like Craig?"

"He doesn't look like Craig," Tweek says, twitching. "He just has that - ah. That hair."

"Black hair, you mean?" Wendy rolls her eyes and goes to the coffee maker on the counter.

"Hello," Stan says, putting his hand out. Tweek startles like he's afraid Stan might have a knife, but then shakes with him. "Stan Emerson," he says. "Or Marsh. Kenny says my name was Marsh when I lived here."

"Marsh?" Twitch, fidget; this guy is constantly in motion. "Like Shelley?"

"You knew Shelley Marsh?"

"She used to beat me up - gah!" Tweek jumps out of the chair. "Look, I'm sorry, dude, I'm sure you're a nice guy, but - Wendy, I don't think this is such a good idea!"

"What isn't such a good idea?" Wendy hands Tweek a cup of coffee, and he immediately chugs it.

"Associating with - ah - shadow people!" Tweek says. He slams the empty mug onto the counter and grabs Wendy's shoulders. "Kenny used to be the only one who could see them, and he flipped out completely! What if we end up like he used to be, on drugs, institutionalized -"

"Tweek, stop." Wendy puts her hands on his face and looks directly into his eyes. His breathing slows a little, but he doesn't seem much calmer. "There's no cause for alarm," Wendy says. "He's just a nice man who had amnesia as a kid."

"Amnesia - gah!" Tweek jumps backward, out of her grip. "I'm sorry, ah - I can't handle this - I'll be upstairs!"

He makes a mad dash for the stairs to the second floor and vaults them in four bounding leaps. Stan flinches when a door slams upstairs, but Wendy doesn't seem startled or surprised. She stares blankly in the direction of Tweek's exit for a few seconds, then takes his empty coffee mug to the dish washer.

"Anyway," she says. "What I was saying, about Kenny. He's got this quality that makes me think he can't lie. Not about anything important, anyway. He never lied to me about using, even when he knew I'd stop him, even when he was at his worst. It's like it never occurred to him to learn how to deceive someone, I think because everyone in his family is so - blunt and direct, would be one way to put it."

"Is he okay?" Stan asks.

"Oh, who knows. I think he's doing better, but with his sister pregnant and everything -"

"No, I mean, um, your husband. Tweek."

"Tweek is Tweek," Wendy says. She goes to the sink and starts washing something. "It's just the way he is."

"Ever since his parents died?"

"No, he was pretty much always that way."

Stan gulps more tea, confused. He's only known Wendy for the past few days, but she seems pretty self-possessed and capable. He can't imagine her falling for a guy like that, or even putting up with him for very long.

"Would you describe South Park as a weird sort of town?" Stan asks, because that's how he feels about it so far. "Or, like, a mysterious one?"

"Buddy, you've got no idea," Wendy says, and she grins. "You feeling better?" she asks as she walks back to the table.

"Yeah," Stan says. "Thanks for letting me hang out here. I just didn't want Kyle to see me all freaked out like that. He's been through so much."

"You have, too, you know," Wendy says. She sits down and gives Stan a weary smile. "It's okay to be overwhelmed. I haven't known Kyle very long, but I don't think he'd have trouble relating."

"That's the thing, though," Stan says. "We can't both be overwhelmed. And he won't even leave Kenny's apartment. He's afraid - I don't know what he's afraid of, but he won't leave South Park, either. I think he's still really torn up about Christophe."

"His friend who was - killed?"

"Yeah," Stan says. He groans and puts his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands. "Shit, what if Tweek is right? What if we're putting you all in danger by being here?"

"Honey," Wendy says, reminding Stan of Sharon for a moment. "Tweek is never right. Not about shadow people conspiracies, anyway. And whatever is going on with you and Kyle involves Kenny, and if Kenny is involved, I'm involved."

"Why?" Stan asks. He takes his hands away from his face, wondering if that was a rude question. Wendy doesn't seem bothered by it. She shrugs.

"'Cause nobody messes with him without going through me," she says. "And speaking of Kenny, I promised I'd bring him lunch. Are you ready to head back over to his apartment? I could drop you off on the way."

"That's really nice of you," Stan says. "Bringing Kenny lunch." He didn't mean to imply anything, or maybe he did. Wendy narrows her eyes slightly.

"I can't imagine dating you," she says, and Stan laughs.

"I must not have been a very good boyfriend. Considering you don't even remember me."

They grin at each other like none of this is very distressing, and for a moment it's not. Stan gets up and rinses out his mug before putting it in the dish washer.

"You didn't have to do that," Wendy says, laughing.

"It's the least I can do," Stan says. "Everybody's been so nice to us."

"Well, we have a vested interest."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"Figuring out what the hell happened to our town," Wendy says. She walks to the sink and pulls the dish rag from the oven handle, offering it so Stan can dry his hands.

"So you do think something happened?" Stan says. Wendy drops her head back, moaning.

"I don't know," she says. "I want to believe that something did."

"Why?"

"Because I want Kenny to be right." She takes the dish rag and examines one of its frayed corners. "I can't shake the feeling that he deserves that kind of vindication. I feel like we were wrong - like I was wrong. Like I could have done more to help him."

"Sounds like you did a lot, actually."

Wendy shrugs. "A lot, maybe, but not enough. Ready to go?"

Stan nods, ready to see Kyle, though he suspects he'll break down all over again when he tries to tell Kyle about his meeting with Sharon Marsh. He was so sure, in that waiting room, that she was his long lost mother, more for her reaction to him than from anything he felt for her, which was a lot, though it's already hard to pinpoint what those feelings were. Something beyond familiarity and recognition, something different but not totally dissimilar to what he felt when he met Kyle, and even what he felt when he met Kenny and Wendy. He thinks it must be like what one side of a velcro strap feels when it's too worn down to properly cling to the other side anymore, an impossible desire to fit where he once belonged. Thinking about this calls up some half-memory of velcro shoes, which Stan is almost certain he never wore after the age of ten, and suddenly he's throwing up in Wendy's car.

"Oh, Jesus," he says as she pulls over to the side of the road, holding his shoulder and telling him it's okay. "I'm so sorry, fuck, I'll pay to have it cleaned -"

"No, shh, it's alright," she says. She parks the car, gets out and walks around to the passenger side to help him clean himself up, telling him the whole time that it's okay. Stan just trembles and thanks her, wondering why she's not disgusted by him, and how he could possibly feel like he's done this, with her, a thousand times before.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:** Kyle's chapters are always long. Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter, I love hearing what you guys are thinking about where the story is going. Looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks about this chapter in particular!

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><p>It's been a long time since Kyle has had a legitimate agoraphobic episode, and he'd forgotten how comforting the first week or so can be, before the days start stacking up around his shoulders like unread newspapers and the guilt sets in. They've been in South Park for four days now, and Kyle has not left the McCormick residence since he arrived here after that incident at the police station. Out there, the town was too much for him, full of eerily familiar smells, and though that police chief was the only resident Kyle met other than the ones who visit or reside in this apartment, Eric Cartman was more than enough to convince Kyle that he's not ready to face what's out there. Even when Kyle was living in Stan's apartment in Akron, he would step out to walk to the market or go to the bar down the street with Stan for Coors Light on draft. Here, he's perfectly comfortable staying indoors, observing South Park through Kenny's living room windows. That's where he's seated now, on the floor with his nose pressed to the cool window, a blanket wrapped around him in a cup of tea steaming in his hands. All that's missing is Stan.<p>

Outside, the sky is gray and bleary, occasionally letting lose a sleety mist of precipitation. Kyle sips his tea and shivers inside his blanket, hoping that Stan will be back soon. He's worried, and annoyed with that Wendy girl for volunteering to drive Stan to meet this supposed 'mother.' Nobody here seems to understand how much finding his mother would mean to Stan, and they've been throwing the prospect that she's right here in town around like it's no big deal, suggesting Stan should stop in for a chat. Kyle begged Stan not to indulge these probably crazy people, but he can't deny that it was Christophe who sent them here, his letter signed with their secret code word from childhood, and Kyle trusts Christophe with his life. He supposes he can now only trust Christophe's memory with his life. He drinks more tea, and though it's piping hot he still feels a bit cold. It's been over a week now since he learned of Christophe's death, and he still can't make himself accept that he's really gone, that he won't show up at Kenny's door, irate with Kyle for believing he would ever desert him.

Kyle continues watching the parking lot, listening to the quiet of this small but oddly welcoming apartment. He had Karen help him clean it, and both of them were a bit clueless about the difference between Windex and Lysol at first, but Kyle carefully read the backs of the bottles before they set to work. Karen grew up in a household where the children didn't have chores because the adults didn't bother with chores themselves, and Kyle always had maids and orderlies to clean up after him. Cleaning the apartment was a strangely rewarding project for both of them, and they bonded in the process. Kyle was careful to give her the non-chemical tasks like vacuuming, and they cheerfully exchanged anecdotes about the travesties of their childhoods while they worked. Kyle considers Karen his friend, more so than Kenny, who continues to alarm him and has a worrying intimacy with Stan, though Kyle supposes Kenny would exercise the same familiarity with him if Kyle didn't jump away whenever Kenny tried to grab him.

When Wendy's car finally pulls into the lot outside the apartment, Kyle watches with a measure of annoyance as she hugs Stan goodbye before driving off. He shouldn't be jealous; he knew this would happen, that people would instantly love Stan if he ever opened himself up to them, but this woman was apparently Stan's girlfriend in some alternate universe, and that's troubling, despite the fact that Kyle has discerned over the past few days that she's in love with Kenny.

"Well?" Kyle says when Stan comes through the door, looking tired and slightly disheveled. Kyle is glad Karen is in her room, taking her usual afternoon nap. "How was it?"

"Um, it was," Stan says, and he doesn't need to go any further, the blasted apart expression on his face describing the experience well enough. Kyle hurries to him and pulls him into his arms. Stan falls against him gratefully, his head resting on Kyle's shoulder, arms winding around Kyle's back.

"Damn that Kenny," Kyle says, his teeth gritted as he pets Stan's hair. "He never should have gotten your hopes up."

"No - Kyle." Stan sniffles and lifts his head. He smells a bit like old coffee filters and puke, but Kyle withholds that observation as he watches Stan's lips tremble. "It was her. It was my mother."

"Wha - but - she recognized you?" Again, Kyle experiences intense, wholly unfair jealousy. He's thought about his real parents so often, secretly. Kenny's claims that they're here in town are the real reason he's afraid to leave the apartment. What if they're worse than his adoptive parents? What if they're better, and they don't want anything to do with him, because why would they?

"No - yeah - sort of," Stan says. His eyes are dry now, but they're red-rimmed, his cheeks splotchy. "We felt - something. She felt it, too. Kyle, she, like. Hugged me."

He loses it then, and Kyle moans, his own eyes growing wet while he holds Stan. Kyle rocks him in his arms, wanting to ask him how he could be sure about this, and if he started crying in her presence before or after she hugged him, but he's not going to question Stan about what he feels is true. That's Kyle's mother talking, all that doubt and sneering disbelief, and it's not his place to protect Stan from what he's feeling, though he wants to, badly.

"Come on," Kyle says. "Come to the bedroom - do you want to change your clothes?"

"Yeah," Stan says, wiping his face with his sleeves, sniffling. "I threw up." He sounds about six years old. Kyle nods and takes his hand, leading him toward the bedroom that Kenny has been - Kyle must admit - very kind to lend to them.

Inside Kenny's bedroom, Kyle shuts the door and leaves the lights off, letting the gray glow from the window illuminate the room. He undresses Stan, pausing between articles of clothing to wipe Stan's face and kiss his cheeks.

"Are you alright?" Kyle asks when Stan is dressed down to his boxer shorts, his fragrant clothes in a pile near the door. "Do you want a shower?"

"I just want to get in bed with you," Stan says. "Um, maybe I should brush my teeth first?"

"If you want to," Kyle says, confused.

"Just, 'cause, um." Stan sniffles. "I want to kiss you."

"Oh - okay - well, you don't need to brush your teeth. I don't mind."

"Don't lie." Stan smiles a little, leaning down to kiss Kyle's temple. "You mind. Or anyway, I don't want to make you kiss - barf. The taste is starting to gross me out, anyway. I don't think I'll ever drink coffee again. Be right back."

Kyle takes his own clothes off while Stan brushes his teeth in the attached bathroom, and he climbs under the blankets that are piled on the bed. The sheets aren't the cleanest Kyle has ever encountered, but if he wanted to wash them he'd have to leave the apartment and find a laundromat, and there is something strangely comforting about the scent of Kenny. He's promised Stan and Kyle that he's never had sex or even jerked off in this bed, which is odd, especially since Kyle immediately believed him. Kyle and Stan haven't desecrated the sheets in that fashion since they've arrived, Kyle still too worn down by what happened to Christophe to want anything more than intense cuddling. He feels differently when Stan walks out of the bathroom in his boxers, and his legs spread involuntarily under the blankets, because he wants Stan closer than cuddling can manage, inside him again. He holds his arms out and Stan hurries into them, moaning with renewed contentment as Kyle pulls the blankets up to their chins.

"So," Kyle says when they're pressed completely together, overly warm beneath the blankets, though the apartment is drafty enough that Kyle can feel the chill on the back of his exposed ear. "Your mother," he says. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"She had my nose," Stan says. He doesn't seem to be in danger of crying again, his eyes bright with excitement. "And she said that her ex-husband - my dad, I guess - she said he had my eyes."

"Wait, so she recognized you as a long lost child?" Kyle says. "Stan, that's amazing, that's -"

"No, it wasn't like that," Stan says, quashing Kyle's hope that his own alleged South Park family might know him at first sight. "She doesn't remember losing a kid named Stan, or ever having one. But my sister asked for me once, when she was coming off of anesthesia. And my mom - she just - she was, like, _me_, Kyle, only not exactly. We talked about nursing, and I wanted to stay there all day, but then I thought about Christophe."

"You thought about Christophe?"

"About what happened to him." Stan kisses Kyle's cheek as if to apologize for bringing it up. "And I thought, Jesus. What if whoever hurt him is on his way here? What if he's going to hurt more people?"

"Back up for a minute," Kyle says, not ready to think about that. "How did she react to you? How did she get to the point where she was bringing up her ex-husband's eye color?"

"Well, I told her I wanted a nose job and she said I shouldn't get one, 'cause my face was, um." He blushes, and Kyle kisses him, because, yes, his face is perfect. "She said I didn't need one. And that got to me, for some reason, and me getting all emotional made her emotional, and she made me hot chocolate, Kyle, and it was like, that feeling. That having a mom feeling. I thought I knew what it'd be like, but it was better than anything I could have imagined. It was so real, and I know you think I'm crazy, but it was really her."

"I don't think you're crazy." Kyle strokes Stan's hair, and he's still jealous, still a little worried, but mostly he's happy for Stan, even as he trembles in Kyle's arms under the blankets. "I'm glad you went there. I shouldn't have tried to discourage you, I just - do you think you'll see her again?"

"She gave me her card," Stan says. "But I don't know. What would I say? God, everything's so screwed up. Are you going to try to meet your parents?"

"You say that so confidently. Like you're sure they're my parents."

"I'm not, I'm sorry." Stan kisses him and rubs his back. "It's just - Kyle. I think it's worth it. Even if you just -"

"I can't think about leaving the apartment yet," Kyle says, his breath quickening. He buries his face against Stan's chest and burrows in as close as he can, staying there until his calm begins to restore. He can't shake the feeling that Stan belongs here and he doesn't. Maybe Christophe sent them here to reconnect only with Stan's people. Kyle doesn't belong anywhere, and accepting that was a big part of reclaiming his sanity, once. He'd rather live with that sadness than let it drive him crazy, and as long as he has Stan's arms around him like this, it's enough.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to pressure you," Stan says. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

"I can't even begin to think about whether or not I'd want it," Kyle says, his voice muffled against Stan's skin. "All of this - it's too much."

"You miss Christophe," Stan says. He's still fixated on this, as if Kyle's grief has some secret romantic counterpart.

"Yes," Kyle says. He lifts his face to Stan's. "I feel like everything good I ever had came from him. He brought me to you. That's everything, Stan. What if I'd never found you? What if I'd never gone to that doctor's office, what if -"

"Hey, no," Stan says. He cups Kyle's face and kisses him, letting Kyle taste the tip of his toothpaste-fresh tongue. "You don't have to worry about that anymore, alright? I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. You've got enough on your mind, so don't worry about stuff that already worked out pretty great." He smiles, and Kyle kisses him more deeply, wishing he could be as comforted by that as Stan wants him to be.

"We should have a code word," Kyle says, breathless when he pulls back. "Me and you, a secret word, the way me and Christophe did, so that no one can ever pretend to be us, or make us act like everything is okay when we're actually being held hostage -"

"That's why you and Christophe had a code word?" Stan says, raising his eyebrows. "You were worried about this kind of stuff as kids?"

"Well - yeah, and rightfully so, it seems!"

"So what was the word?"

"I'll tell you," Kyle says, taking Stan's face in his hands. "But just know that you are the only person I would ever trust with this information."

"Okay." Stan waits, blinks. "I'll keep that in mind."

"You'll never tell anyone this word?"

"Of course not! Kyle!"

"Okay, okay. It's effarig."

"Is that French?"

Kyle laughs. "No, it's the word 'giraffe' spelled backward."

"Uh, okay. Did you guys go to the zoo together as kids?"

"Psh! Christophe at a zoo? My God, I can only imagine it. He'd never shut up about how we're all really animals in cages, paying admission to watch each other sling shit - uh, no, he just always said we knew each other in a past life, and that the word 'giraffe' had some significance for us then, and since our current lives were _lent d'esprit_ - that's like, backward, in French - we should flip it around."

"Kyle." Stan sits up on his elbow. "Christophe said he knew you in a past life?"

"Oh, he was always saying things like that. He was an atheist, though, so it was all metaphorical -"

"Maybe! Or maybe he was talking about South Park!"

Kyle stares up at Stan, who is agitated now, back on the mystery-solving quest. Kyle has to admit that he's been more interested in figuring things out since they came back here, whereas before he was always terrified to encounter anything that might give him a single memory of his past. He's getting the feeling that avoiding the past is not an option anymore.

"It's impossible, though," Kyle says. "He was French."

"Right, but he was young, and kids pick up accents pretty quickly, yeah? God, I don't know, I just - he's the one who told you to come here, and to find me, and he's the one who got killed for whatever he knew. You never considered that he might have meant your actual past life when he said you two once knew each other? Your pre-amnesia life?"

"No, because why would he keep that from me? Christophe was pro-honesty. Even if he thought something would rip me to shreds, he'd still say it."

"Wow, what a guy."

"No, you didn't know him, it was out of kindness, it's why I trusted him so much-"

"Alright, okay." Stan sighs and sinks back to the pillows, tucking his arm around Kyle. "I'm just saying. Maybe we should stop trying to focus on the mystery of me and you for awhile and do more looking into who the hell Christophe was. You said he was adopted, right?"

"Right, like me." Kyle sighs and rubs his finger over Stan's chest, spelling the secret word that he supposes is his secret word with Stan, now: E-F-F-A-R-I-G. That word used to make him feel safe, a secret that he could keep from even his parents, and when he saw it at the bottom of Christophe's letter he was devastated. Only then did he really believe Christophe was gone.

"But if you're not ready to think about this," Stan says hurriedly, "We don't have to talk about it."

"I feel like we don't have that luxury," Kyle says. "You know? Like we're already running out of time. Maybe it's just Christophe's death." He groans and presses his face to Stan's throat, Stan's pulse thumping against Kyle's cheek. He thinks of something he read that upset him when he was eleven or twelve years old, about orphaned kittens being set next to an alarm clock covered with a blanket and being comforted by what they would think was their mother's heartbeat. He wonders what his real mother looks like. Kenny told him that she has red hair like him, and Kyle made him stop there.

"I kind of know what you mean," Stan says. "About time. I can't stop thinking that someone is going to come after us, the way they came after him." He squeezes Kyle and sighs into his hair. "Hey, um, Kyle?"

"Yeah?"

"You know how, at your parents' house, you said you needed me, um, like, in you?"

"Yeah." Kyle reaches down to cup Stan's ass, smiling. He was hoping they could have sex this afternoon, even before Stan came home looking wrecked.

"I think I need that," Stan says, looking slightly terrified, blushing deeply.

"You want to be inside me again?" Kyle asks, putting his mouth over Stan's, trying to lick between his lips.

"Um, yeah, a lot, but, like, today? Could I maybe have you? In me? Like, to try it? 'Cause I think maybe I need that. I mean, I feel like I need that."

"Ah - yeah," Kyle says, taken off guard. Stan has gone from warm to boiling hot under the blankets, his face on fire. Kyle sweeps Stan's hair from his forehead and kisses him, wondering how he's going to do this. He's never been a very good top, because he thinks too much when he has to be the one who's in control, and Stan is very much a virgin in this sense. He's probably never even touched himself down there. Kyle gets hard against Stan's thigh, thinking this, and he kisses Stan more deeply, sweeping his tongue into Stan's mouth until they're both sighing, moaning, and touching each other like nervous kids under the blankets, hands shaking. Kyle knows he shouldn't be anxious about being a good top, because Stan isn't asking to be topped, not really, not in the robustly confident way that Kyle can never quite pull off. He's just asking Kyle to be close to him, to make him feel safe.

"You'll have to show me what to do," Stan says when he pulls back. He's so nervous, like that first time at Kyle's parents' house, like he's afraid Kyle will laugh at him.

"You don't have to do anything," Kyle says. "Just relax, okay?" Kyle sits up on his elbow and pets Stan's bright red cheek. "I'll go really slow." He kisses Stan's perfect nose, already holding back something that's not quite tears. Whatever it is, it's the thing that's making him shake. It's just Stan, probably, how trusting he is, and how much Kyle trusts him. "I'll take care of you," Kyle says when Stan's eyes flutter shut. "I promise. All you have to do is tell me if you're uncomfortable, or if you want to stop, okay?"

"Kay." Stan is calmer now, and he opens his eyes to stare at Kyle's shoulder, letting Kyle pet him. "It's okay if it hurts a little, though. It's supposed to, right? At first?"

"No," Kyle says. "It's not. So tell me if it hurts. I mean it, Stan -"

"Okay, okay. I'll tell you." Stan laughs under his breath, like Kyle is being ridiculous for not wanting to hurt him. Kyle will be able to tell even if Stan doesn't say anything. He can feel it when Stan is hurting, and he knows he's hurting now, that the visit with his mother broke him just as much as it excited him. Kyle bends to kiss Stan's neck, keeping his kisses gentle as his hand skims down over Stan's back.

"You're so fucking beautiful," Kyle says. "She must have thought you were out of your mind, asking for plastic surgery."

"She did look at me like I was crazy," Stan says. "But it was good, you know? That she cared about what my face looks like. She knew me, Kyle. She'd missed me, all that time, even if she couldn't remember my name."

Kyle licks up the few tears that come, and Stan sniffles, keeping his eyes closed. He rolls onto his back under the blankets and pushes his boxers down.

"Are you sure you want to do this now?" Kyle asks. He promises himself that he won't ask again, that he'll trust Stan to know what he wants, but he had to ask once. Stan nods.

"I want it," he says, pulling Kyle on top of him. "I feel like I'm in this dream that someone else is having. If you're inside me I'll know I'm still real. Is that how it felt for you? That time, um, when I was in you?"

"Yeah," Kyle says, though those words and even his memories of that moment are inadequate. "And like nothing before you had ever been real, like nothing that hurt me back then mattered anymore."

"That sounds pretty good," Stan says, pushing out a nervous laugh. Kyle kisses him for awhile, then goes to the bathroom for a bottle of baby oil that he found under Kenny's sink last night while searching for cotton balls, which the McCormicks apparently do not own. He's glad to hear no sound coming from the other door that connects to the bathroom, which leads to Karen's bedroom. He hopes Kenny won't come home early from work. He needs this quiet, for Stan, just the distant sound of the wind through the pines and the hum of the central heating.

"Are you okay with using this?" Kyle asks when he returns to the room, holding up the baby oil. Stan laughs and nods.

"I don't think I have a right to be picky," he says. "As a beginner."

"Yeah, you do! Stan! I want this to be perfect."

"It's already perfect," Stan says, reaching for him. "C'mere, hurry, this bed gets cold without you."

"It is freezing in here," Kyle says. He puts the oil on the pillow and slips back under the blankets, scooting over to Stan. "I can hear the heat running, though. This place is damn drafty."

"I kinda like it," Stan says. He wraps his arms and legs around Kyle, kissing his face. "It makes it that much better when I'm in bed with you like this."

"I wish I could have been there when you were ten," Kyle says. "And every night, in bed with you."

"Well, you'll be there from now on, every night." Stan kisses Kyle's nose primly and rolls onto his back. "So, should I get on my hands and knees or something?"

"Stan! No! Just, um, lie on your stomach and, uh, spread your legs. Maybe put a pillow under your hips, here."

"Have you ever done this to a virgin before?" Stan asks, sounding a little worried as he arranges himself into position, maybe because of Kyle's obvious nerves.

"Not that I know of," Kyle says. "But I _have_ done it, okay, so don't worry. I know my way around an ass."

"Did you do it to Spencer?" Stan asks as Kyle pops open the baby oil. Kyle snorts.

"No," he says. "He wasn't 'comfortable' with 'anal pleasure.' He was exploring that with his therapist when I left him. His theory was that it had to do with his toilet training."

"What a douche."

"Yeah. Now can we not talk about my ex-boyfriend's toilet training while I deflower you? It's kind of turning me off."

"Kay, sorry."

"Maybe we should get you to where you're okay with me touching your ass before I actually use the oil," Kyle says, poised to dump some into his palm. Stan grins at him.

"I'm okay with you touching my ass," he says.

"I could give you a back rub," Kyle says, his hand beginning to tremble. "Or suck your dick for awhile -"

"Kyle, are _you_ okay with this? You don't have to-"

"No, I want to, I do!" It's true; he wants it for Stan and for himself, wants to be enclosed in Stan's warmth in any and every way possible. "I just don't want to rush."

"No rush," Stan says. "Kenny doesn't get home for like three hours. We've got all afternoon."

Already, Stan is the one calming Kyle down. That's fine with Kyle. With this in mind, he spends some just rubbing his slick fingers through the crack of Stan's ass, moaning when Stan presses his hips back.

"This might freak you out at first," Kyle says when his fingers dig in deeper, sliding down lower. "It's okay if it does."

"Okay-_ah_, yuh-yeah." Stan's eye is cracked open against the pillow, but his gaze is fuzzed over and sightless already. "I'm, mhm. Okay with that."

Kyle can feel the truth in those words thrumming through Stan's body, just under his skin, moving down his spine like a wave and breaking when his hips roll. Stan closes his eyes and moans, drooling onto the pillow, and by the time Kyle starts to push in he's relaxed enough to take it easily, a pink flush spreading down over his back. Kyle licks Stan's shoulder and rubs himself against Stan's thigh, so hard for this.

"You're doing awesome," Kyle says in a whisper, and Stan laughs.

"Thanks, dude. Keep going." He wiggles his hips, his legs opening a little more widely under the blankets. "Deeper, okay?"

By the time Kyle works a second finger in he's panting just as hard as Stan is, flopped down against Stan and lapping at his mouth while Stan groans powerfully at the slow push and pull of Kyle's fingers. Kyle has to shush him a moments, lest Karen realize what they're up to.

"Sorry," Stan says, not bothering to whisper. "Just, _unh_, Kyle. Feels so good."

"I'm glad you like it," Kyle says, and it's true. He's never been prouder of anything than he is of reducing Stan to this soft, sweaty, boneless heap beneath him. He knows he shouldn't dare it with the apartment so quiet around them, but he can't resist: he teases his fingers against Stan's prostate, grinning and shushing him when he shouts.

"Jesus Christ," Stan says, sounding almost frightened, his hips pushing back as he searches for that feeling again. "Guh- God Almighty, that was - what -"

"Promise me you'll be quiet and I'll do it again," Kyle whispers.

"Ah - I'll be quiet, yeah, please, _please_, God-"

Kyle wishes he could remember the first time someone did this to him, but he was drunk. Stan looks amazed and upset all at once, and when Kyle swipes his prostate again he cries out, even louder this time.

"Shh, you promised," Kyle says, trailing kisses from Stan's temple and down to the line of his jaw.

"Kyle," Stan moans, barely coherent at this point. "Ah - guh - can you, ha. Could you do that with your dick? Touch me there, like that?"

He's not asking if Kyle is willing, he's wondering if it's possible. Kyle moans and presses his face to Stan's when he nods.

"Yeah," he says, whispering. "Do you want that now?"

"_Please_, please, God, Kyle, Jesus-fuck, yes-"

"You're all blasphemous," Kyle says, grinning as he slowly removes his fingers. Stan whines and arches, his eyes closed against the pillow.

"I'm sorry," he says, pushing out a little sob. "God forgive me."

He actually seems upset, or at least overwhelmed. Kyle gently turns him onto his back and spends some time just kissing him, calming him down. He's surprised when he reaches under the blankets and finds Stan's cock soft and sticky.

"You came?" Kyle says. Stan blushes and nods.

"Um, a couple of times," he says, mumbling, and Kyle kisses him hard, trying not to do anything stupid like squeal with appreciative joy.

"That's good," Kyle says, whispering this into Stan's mouth, not wanting him to be embarrassed. "That's so – if you're really, um, sensitive, that'll make it really good, for you."

"God, I want it so bad," Stan says when he pulls back to lock eyes with Kyle, and he sounds amazed, or impressed, because maybe he needed it before, but Kyle has made him want it.

"I'm going to give it to you," Kyle says, nodding slowly, afraid that he'll come as soon as he's inside Stan, long before he's able to connect with his prostate. "Roll onto your back, okay?"

Stan does, and Kyle moves down to kneel between his legs. He drags his nails over Stan's chest, just lightly, and rubs his thumbs over Stan's trembling stomach. This part has always been awkward to him, watching some other man lie down and offer himself like this, but it's different when Stan lets Kyle ease his legs apart. Usually Kyle feels jealous, because he wants to be the one lying there, getting worked on, but right now he just wants to give Stan everything, and especially this, because he deserves it, needs it, wants it.

"I love you, alright?" Kyle says, because he always wanted someone to say that to him before sex. Stan smiles and reaches for him, pulling him down until their noses are touching.

"Yeah, alright," Stan says. "I'll allow it." He grins at Kyle's expression and kisses him. "I love you, too," he says when he drops back to the pillows. "I kind of wished you were with me today, when I met her. I want to do everything with you, like, all the important stuff." His blush spreads down over his throat, to his chest, and he lifts his hips a little. "So, um. Go."

"Go?" Kyle laughs and grabs the baby oil.

"I just feel kind of empty," Stan says. "Since you, um, took your fingers out."

"Okay," Kyle says, slicking his cock and trying not to laugh at himself as he thinks of it as a good starter cock, not too long or thick but big enough to leave an impression. "Ready?"

"Uh-huh," Stan says, and he's toying with one of his nipples as he says so, probably subconsciously. Kyle bites his lip and lines up, watching Stan's mouth fall open. Kyle spent a long time stretching him, and the head goes in easily. He watches Stan's eyes for anything resembling panic as he sinks in deeper, a little at a time, trying not to think about the fact that he's never really done this sober and he's already close to coming. It helps that Stan is squeezing his arms so hard it hurts, little shocks of discomfort keeping Kyle's rapidly peaking arousal at bay.

"You okay?" Kyle asks, almost all in now, Stan taking it like a fucking champ. He's sweating, fuzzy-eyed, but he doesn't seem to be in any pain. He nods slowly, staring up at Kyle.

"That's crazy," he says, his voice tight and small. "How – how that feels."

"Crazy, um, good?"

"Real good," Stan says, and Kyle slips all the way in, balls deep. He watches Stan's eyelids grow heavier, his mouth open under Kyle's as it closes over his. "I just, ah," Stan says before Kyle can kiss him. "I never thought I'd feel like this."

"Like what?" Kyle asks. He feels bigger than the room they're in, bigger than the town, godlike with Stan so hot and tight around him, only the pull of Stan's body holding him on earth.

"Like, I feel like." Stan squeezes hard around him, and they both groan, Kyle's forehead dropping down to rest against Stan's cheek. "Full," Stan says, whispering this in Kyle's ear, his fingers stroking through Kyle's hair. "So full, like I've never been empty."

They maintain a slow, dozy pace, exchanging kisses and little moans of encouragement, Kyle's hips moving only in tiny rolls. Kyle feels full, too, like he's never been empty. He knows exactly what Stan means.

Eventually, he gives up on being able to find Stan's prostate with his cock; it's much easier with fingers. He stretches out on his back and lets Stan bounce on him, wiggling around until he's found the right angle. There's no keeping him quiet after he has, so Kyle just lies there and focuses on trying not to come while Stan throws his head back and grinds himself down onto Kyle's cock, shouting about God and Jesus again, falling apart. When his orgasm becomes inevitable Kyle stops trying to do math problems in his head and just lets himself enjoy this: the way Stan is moving on him and the way he looks right now, wanton and mindless and still strangely innocent, tears glittering at the corners of his pinched-shut eyes. Finally allowing himself to come makes Kyle shout more loudly than Stan has all afternoon, and he doesn't care, because he barely knows where he is in the aftermath, just that Stan is here, kissing him, hovering all around him.

"Me too," Stan says, panting, and Kyle has no idea what he's talking about until Stan reaches down to jerk himself and comes again, moaning weakly this time. He presses his face to Kyle's neck and drops all his weight down onto Kyle, his legs splaying out behind him. Kyle somehow didn't realize how much energy he was using by trying to make himself last, but just the effort of lifting his arms and wrapping them around Stan's back is exhausting. Only when Stan shifts on top of him does he remember that he's still inside Stan, and he eases him off carefully, kissing him while their bodies disconnect.

"Um, so," Stan says, leaning up over Kyle on shaking arms. He looks like he thinks he needs to say something profound and feels guilty for not having anything prepared. Kyle shakes his head.

"C'mere," he says, sitting up and pulling Stan toward the pillows, because somehow they ended up far away from them, diagonal across the bed. "Back under the blankets, okay?"

"I think I was too loud," Stan says as Kyle tucks him under the blankets and into his arms. Kyle shrugs and kisses Stan's forehead. They're still sweating, but they twist around each other as tightly as they can, ankles rubbing together.

"Karen will forgive you," Kyle says. He leans back a bit to peer into Stan's eyes, which are sleepy and lidded. "You okay?"

Stan nods. "I wanted to trade places and do you when we were done, but, um, I think I need to sleep for awhile."

"Yeah, you do." Kyle strokes his hair and gives him a little lick across the bridge of his nose. Stan is already heavy in his arms, sighing. Kyle loves him so much that he's afraid he'll tear a hole in the universe from the force of it, because nothing this big can exist without throwing a shadow. He watches Stan sink completely into sleep, kisses his forehead and says prayers to any gods who might be looking out for Stan to keep on doing that, because Kyle can't be responsible for taking care of someone else, especially not someone this good. He knows he should feel elated, that a normal person would, but his happiness in this moment is terrifying. He clings to Stan and shuts his eyes, knowing that he won't be able to sleep. He's exhausted, but his heart is hammering.

Stan is right to be worried about whoever killed Christophe tracing them here. Behind his closed eyes, Kyle sees the sharp slashes of Christophe's handwriting, and hears his warnings again. The letter was in French, which was the language they spoke to each other when they wanted to hide things from Kyle's mother, who pretended to be more fluent than she actually was.

_If you're reading this, it's because I've been found out. I'm sure it was staged to look like a suicide, just to humiliate me. I would tell you everything, my little effarig, but I am writing this letter in advance as a precaution, and I can't risk having a written record of what happened existing. The priest who will deliver this to you in the event of my death is a man who I trust, and if I had given him an account of what is at stake here, even if he upheld his promise not to read it, that would be tantamount to murdering him in cold blood. I think perhaps I would kill for you if I could, effarig, but that is against the rules. _

_The only person who can help you is a retired whore named Kenny McCormick who lives in South Park, Colorado. Go to see him as soon as you receive this. _

_I've failed you, effarig, unless I've somehow managed to find your missing half and get you to him before you see this letter. If I haven't, I fear that we're all supremely fucked. If I have, there is a slim chance we're not. My feeling always was that once you were returned to him I would be ripped off the earth, so perhaps that is what I'm hoping for as I write this._

_God help you all. (A lot of good that did)._

Kyle opens his eyes and lets out his breath. Outside, the sky is getting a bit darker behind the clouds. He has his back to the bedroom's window, but he can see the day fading as the dimness of the room deepens, making the apartment feel cozier. He can hear cabinets opening and closing out in the apartment, and he should get out there and start helping Karen make dinner. He's got an elaborate one planned, beef stroganoff with a pineapple upsidedown cake for dessert. It's the least he can do for these people who have suddenly surrounded him like a makeshift family, the only one that's ever felt real.

He tries to stop thinking about Christophe's letter, but for the past four days he hasn't been able to. He keeps running over the more cryptic elements, until they start to wear away and blur together. The last line bothers him the most, though he can't say why. Christophe was always saying cynical things about God, and Kyle had always interpreted it as atheism, assuming he was talking about the idea of God when he said that God was the biggest bitch of them all, one of his favorite refrains. Being called effarig in the letter convinced Kyle that it was authentic, but why would Christophe appeal to God to help them? It could just be a throwaway thing, a colloquial way to wish them good luck, but Kyle's mind keeps catching on it, and on the parenthetical statement attached to it.

"Kyle?" Stan mumbles as Kyle carefully tries to extract himself from Stan's grip.

"I'm going to start working on dinner," Kyle says, whispering. He kisses Stan's eyelids. "Go back to sleep."

"Nuh – I'll help –"

"Shh, Karen can help me. Get some rest." He has to stop himself from calling Stan 'effie,' which was what Kyle and Christophe used as an endearment when they were in mixed company, to keep their actual code word a secret. For Kyle it doesn't signify Christophe himself so much as someone sacred and invaluable, but considering Stan's insecurity about Christophe, Kyle decides he'd better not start calling Stan that. He kisses Stan once more before slipping out of bed. Stan is already asleep again, his arm hugged around Kyle's pillow.

Kyle washes up a bit, dresses and walks out into the living room area, closing the bedroom door behind him as quietly as he can. Karen looks up from the onion she's chopping and smiles.

"Hey, there you are," she says. "Is Stan asleep in there?"

"Yeah, he had a long day," Kyle says.

"Sounded like you were having some pretty awesome sex," Karen says, and Kyle laughs, embarrassed only on behalf of Stan's purity.

"Sorry if we were too loud," he says. He goes to the fridge for a beer, wishing he had some gin. Based on what Karen has told him about her brother's substance abuse problems, Kyle wouldn't want to bring hard liquor into the apartment, but the novelty of beer has long worn off.

"Nah, it's fine," Karen says. "I'm glad someone in this apartment is finally getting laid."

"Kenny doesn't date?" Kyle thinks of what Christophe wrote in his letter; he's been wondering how literal 'retired whore' could possibly be. Kenny is good looking and charming in a hayseed way, but there is something a bit off about him, and Kyle can't tell if he returns Wendy's feelings or not.

"Kenny dating?" Karen laughs. "Yeah, no. He doesn't think he could handle it. They tell you at those rehab places that you're not supposed to date for a year. I think Kenny heard 'ten.'"

"And you – you and your, um, the father of your baby? That relationship is over?"

"That's what I'm supposed to tell everyone," Karen says, mumbling. She's still chopping onions, unevenly, and Kyle wants to take over or at least demonstrate proper technique, but he restrains himself. "It's fucking humiliating," Karen says when she looks up. "Can I tell you something?"

"Sure," Kyle says, confused.

"I mean, this is a big secret," Karen says, holding up the knife. "Even my brother – especially my brother, he can't know about this. But I'm tired of people thinking I'm some tramp who let Craig Tucker knock her up."

"Craig," Kyle says. The name sounds vaguely familiar, from one of Kenny's rants. "He's the father – or – wait, you're saying he's not?"

"You seriously can't tell Kenny," Karen says. "Or anyone – not even Stan!"

"Okay," Kyle says, fully planning on telling Stan.

"Everyone thinks I'm some dumb slut," Karen says. "And you'd have to be dumb to sleep with Craig, though I guess if you were a gold digger it'd be a good idea. I never let that asshole put his hands on me. I've been with the father of my baby for a long time, okay? Probably since I was like, geez, seven years old. He used to bring me daisies."

"Who is he?" Kyle asks, cheered by this gossip. He hops up on the counter and drinks from his beer. "Someone Kenny hates more than Craig? Oh – God – it's not that police chief, is it?"

"_Cartman_? Hell no!" Karen laughs and winces. "No, Kenny doesn't hate him, he doesn't even know him. No one in town does. That's what I like about him. Well, that's what I liked, for all those years, like he was my secret. When I was little I thought he was my imaginary friend, but now I'm pregnant, and he's never here, and this whole mysterious boyfriend thing is getting a little shitty, especially since I have to tell people it's Craig's."

"Why would you have to tell people it's Craig's?" Kyle asks. His idle curiosity about this is giving way to something else, an uneasy feeling.

"For the money," Karen says, her mouth quirking. "We're blackmailing him. It was Damien's idea."

"Whoa," Kyle says. He rears back a little and drinks more beer. "Damien? That's your boyfriend?"

"Yeah," Karen says. "I wish I could show you a picture of him. He's so beautiful, oh, gosh – and he has black hair, like Stan! And like Craig, so it's convenient that the one guy Damien knew how to blackmail and who also happens to be rich has the same hair color that my baby will probably have."

"I'm so lost," Kyle says. "Why would your boyfriend want people to think someone else was the father? Just for Craig's money?"

"Well, apparently Damien went to school here for awhile when he was a kid," Karen says. "And, like, some stuff happened with his father, and he thinks the whole town is against him now? So he just made me promise early on not to tell anyone about us, and believe me, I know how dumb that sounds, but he's really loyal. He's a violinist, so he has to travel all the time, 'cause he does all these international concerts and stuff. He's, like, a prodigy, he's been doing this since he was a kid, traveling the world and playing the violin. But he always comes back to me, and, I don't know, before I was pregnant, like I said, I was okay with the secrecy thing. He's convinced that Kenny would forbid me from seeing him if he knew who he was. He won't even tell _me_ his last name, so that I won't be able to look up whatever happened with his father in South Park back in the day. He's really ashamed of his family. He never talks about them."

Kyle stares at her for awhile, drinking beer. He's made it to the bottom of the bottle, and he plunks it on the counter when it's empty, waiting for Karen to tell him that she's joking about this. She doesn't exactly strike him as one of the brilliant minds of her generation, but no way is she this clueless.

"You don't even know his last name?" Kyle says.

"I know, it sounds crazy." She groans and picks up the cutting board, dumping the chopped onions onto a plate. "But Damien promises it'll be different once the baby gets here, that we'll be together all the time and I'll know everything about him. And I know what you're thinking, but he was _really_ excited when I got pregnant. I felt terrible when I told him what happened, that the condom must have ripped or whatever, but he was ecstatic. He just loves me so much, you know? He's really happy we're having a baby together."

"How old is this guy?" Kyle asks, picturing some nasty little European violinist with a bald spot and a pot belly.

"He's Kenny's age," Karen says. "Just a few years older than me – twenty-six. Oh, you'll meet him. He says that after the baby comes, after we have this unbreakable connection, he'll introduce himself to my family, and to everybody in South Park. He figures that they'll forgive him for whatever happened with his dad once they see that he's a good dad himself. He's so sweet, Kyle, you'd love him, really."

"Sweet?" Kyle says, raising his eyebrows. "What was this about blackmail?"

"First of all," Karen says, "Craig Tucker deserves everything he gets. He goes out of his way to make everyone miserable, then he became a freaking millionaire off of making unblockable pop-up ads. Plus, he has the nerve to be having an affair with a married man and thinking he can get away with it. So, frankly, I don't really care about the fact that he's paying for my baby's prenatal care. You wouldn't, either, if you met him."

"Why can't Damien just pay for this stuff himself?" Kyle asks, aware that he's treading dangerous waters here. Karen shrugs.

"He could, he's got plenty of money, but someone has to be the father, right? This way, nobody asks questions, and Damien can keep on being anonymous until the baby comes."

"And Craig went along with this?" Kyle asks, sputtering now. Karen seems so calm as she tells him this, but he supposes it's in her nature to take things in stride. She barely batted an eyelash when Kenny moved two strangers into their apartment, claiming they were his long lost friends.

"Well, he has to," Karen says. "Damien will tell Wendy about what Craig's doing if he doesn't cooperate with us."

"What does Wendy care?"

"She's married to the guy Craig is having the affair with," Karen says. She smiles at the look on Kyle's face and gets another beer from the fridge, opening it before handing it to him. "Sorry," she says as she watches him gulp from the bottle. "I guess it all sounds a little crazy out loud. It's just nice to be able to finally tell someone."

"Karen," Kyle says, not even sure where to start with all the reservations and red flags that popped up while he listened to that story. Before he can say anything, they hear the rattle of Kenny's keys outside the apartment door.

"You can't say anything!" Karen says, her eyes going wide. "Seriously, Kyle, you have to promise. Don't tell Kenny about any of this." Her voice has dropped to a whisper now, and she looks panicked. Kyle wonders what she's really afraid of – Kenny's disapproval, or Damien's.

"I promise," Kyle whispers, and it's sincere, for now. He'll have to consult with Stan about this later. Kenny comes through the door looking chipper, his hair damp from the sleet that's pelting the windows.

"Hey!" Karen says when Kenny walks over to kiss her forehead. "How was your day?"

"Pretty good," Kenny says. He grins at Kyle, who gives him a wary smile in return. Kenny's enthusiasm for Kyle and Stan being here makes Kyle nervous, though he's sure at this point that Kenny is harmless. "How about yours?" he asks as he walks past Kyle, clapping him on the shoulder.

"It was fine," Kyle says. "Stan went to see his – Sharon."

"Yeah, Wendy told me," Kenny says. He grabs a beer from the fridge and opens it with his teeth. It still makes Kyle cringe, four days after he first witnessed this. "Sounds like it went really well."

"I don't know if I'd say that," Kyle says. He gets the pasta pot from the dish rack and fills it with water. "There were good and bad elements."

"Wendy said he got pretty upset," Kenny says. "But I guess that's to be expected."

"What about any of this is to be expected?" Kyle says, scoffing. Kenny is unperturbed by Kyle's irritation, as usual, and he grins at Kyle like he knew he would say that.

"Touché, Broflovski," Kenny says. "Where is Stan, anyway? In the bedroom?"

"Sleeping," Kyle says. "He's really worn out, so try to keep it down."

"Kyle spent most of the afternoon wearing Stan out," Karen says, smirking when Kyle gives her a look.

"Cool," Kenny says, and Kyle isn't sure if that went over his head or he's just not surprised. "So Stan is okay, though?" he asks, hovering at Kyle's shoulder while he adds salt to the pasta water.

"He's okay," Kyle says. "He's worried, though, and I am, too. I hope we're not putting you guys in danger by being here. Considering what happened to my friend."

"Nah, we're fine," Kenny says. "As long as we're all together."

"Of course," Kyle says, rolling his eyes. Kenny stands behind him and squeezes his shoulders. "Did you make any progress with that police chief?" Kyle asks, letting Kenny rub his shoulders. There's no point in resisting his physical affection, and as creepy as it can occasionally be, it is nice to be around someone who is always so ridiculously happy to see him.

"Cartman's a lost cause," Kenny says. "I was hoping Butters could help me work on him, but I think those two are having issues. I'm hoping Butters is finally waking up to what a piece of shit Cartman is, but there's no telling. At this point, I don't need to see the fingerprints on that trophy, anyway. The whole town feels different already, you know?" He looks at Karen, who shrugs.

"The apartment definitely feels different," she says. "Thanks to Kyle."

"Do either of you have any plans to leave this apartment anytime soon?" Kenny asks.

"I'm fine here," Karen says. "Let everybody gossip about me without a visual aide."

"How about you?" Kenny asks. He releases Kyle's shoulders and stands beside him. "Now that Stan has met his mother –"

"You know, this is all very easy for you to talk about," Kyle says, glaring at him. "But can you calm down for two seconds and imagine what it's like for us? We don't remember these people, and they don't remember us. If Stan felt some sort of connection with Sharon Marsh, that's great, but what's he supposed to do now? Invite her over here for dinner? They can't have any kind of real relationship."

"Okay, okay, sorry," Kenny says, squeezing Kyle's shoulders again. Kyle cringes and steps out of his grip, going to the pantry for the egg noodles. Kenny follows, of course.

"It's not actually that easy for me to talk about," Kenny says. "I mean, it wasn't, before you came. And now that you're here – I'm sorry, okay? I'm just happy. I can't stop being happy about this."

"Well, maybe your spirits will be dampened when there's more bloodshed," Kyle says, muttering. He feels guilty for that and turns to Kenny, who doesn't look upset or afraid.

"I used to be a superhero," Kenny says. Kyle raises his eyebrows.

"Of course."

"Seriously." Kenny grins. "So don't worry about it. Nobody's laying a hand on you guys, not without going through me. My only problem is I feel like we should be doing something in the meantime, and I don't really know where to start. I need a clue or something."

"Stan was saying we should do more looking into Christophe's background," Kyle says, sighing. He presses the bag of pasta into Kenny's hand. "Boil that, will you? I'm going to start on the cake."

"You're going to start on the cake." Kenny is beaming, and Kyle has to duck away when he leans to try to kiss Kyle on the forehead.

"What is your deal?" Kyle asks, pushing past him. "You're awfully starved for affection, aren't you? If you're going to randomly kiss someone, try it on Wendy. I think she'd be more receptive."

"Wendy's married," Kenny says, following Kyle back to the stove. Kyle wishes Stan would wake up so that he could absorb some of Kenny's clinginess. "Though, actually, her husband is cheating on her."

"What?" Karen yelps, looking up from the carrots she's peeling at the sink. Kyle tries to meet her gaze, but her eyes are locked on Kenny's, wide and startled. "She – you – how do you know that? Does Wendy know?"

"No, but I think I'd better tell her," Kenny says. "She has a right –"

"You can't!" Karen says, shouting. "You can't tell her, Kenny, she – she'll be devastated."

"I don't know about that," Kenny says. "Aren't you even going to ask me who Tweek is cheating with?"

"It's none of our business," Karen says. She glances at Kyle, pleading, but he doesn't know what he can do for her, and if her plot to blackmail Craig is foiled, it might be the best thing for her, bringing all of this ridiculous secrecy to light. Kyle still can't get his mind around why exactly this Damien person needs to remain anonymous, but he gets the feeling that the reason isn't magnanimous, or as simple as Karen believes.

"Well," Kyle says when Karen continues to give him that beseeching look. "Selfishly, you might not want to be the one who tells her. She seems like the type who'd be prone to shoot the messenger."

"Exactly!" Karen says, pointing a half-peeled carrot at Kenny. "She'd hate you, Kenny. She'd be so humiliated if you were the one to tell her."

"Whatever," Kenny says. He finishes his beer and lines up the empty bottle next to Kyle's. "I don't even know if I should tell you who he's cheating with," he says, poking Karen.

"I don't want to hear it," she says, going back to the carrots. "You know how I feel about gossip." Kyle can feel Kenny giving him a questioning look, but he avoids Kenny's eyes, returning to the pantry for the cake-making supplies. Kenny's bedroom door opens, and Kyle is glad for the distraction when Stan walks out, yawning and rubbing at his eyes, his hair still a sex-wrecked mess.

"Hey, there he is!" Kenny says, bounding to Stan like a dog who's recognized his beloved owner. He hugs Stan hard enough to make him stumble backward a little. "I heard it went pretty good with your mom," he says when he pulls back.

"Yeah," Stan says, looking to Kyle desperately.

"Don't make him talk about it, he just woke up," Kyle snaps.

"Sorry," Kenny says. He reaches up to clumsily reorder Stan's hair. "I'm just really happy for you, man."

"Thanks," Stan says. He pats Kenny's chest and walks around him, into the kitchen. Kyle is sifting flour, and he smiles when Stan comes to stand behind him, his hands settling on Kyle's hips. Stan presses his cheek to Kyle's when he leans down to watch him work, and Kyle turns to kiss him.

"It's a pineapple upside down cake," Kyle says. "Well, so far it's just flour and baking soda. But it will be a cake."

"I believe you," Stan says, and Kyle grins.

"You guys are so cute," Karen says, still peeling carrots. She's got a distracted little smile on her face, and Kyle wonders if she's thinking about Damien, imagining the life they'll have together after her baby is born. He wonders if she really believes that, or if she just needs to convince herself that she does. When he looks up at Kenny, he's watching them from over the bar that looks into the living room, and Kyle thinks he looks sad, though he's smiling a little, too.

"What did Wendy bring you for lunch?" Stan asks Kenny, and Kyle smirks down at the flour, because that will cheer Kenny up, and that's why Stan asked, and they all know each other well, it's true.

"This awesome Philly cheese steak," Kenny says, brightening. "It was really good. Wendy's the best," he says, pointedly, to Karen, but she doesn't look up from the carrots.

"Well, I hope you won't mind having beef again for dinner," Kyle says, and for some reason this makes Kenny laugh hard. Stan laughs, too, like this is some inside joke he has with Kenny, and he kisses the back of Kyle's head.

"I don't mind," Kenny says. He folds his arms on the bar and leans down to rest his chin on them, watching Stan and Kyle like they're a fascinating TV show. "I don't mind at all, dude."

The sleet hardens into hail, and they all stand at the window to watch the parking lot get covered with little white balls that jump around on the frozen asphalt like marbles. The stroganoff is in the oven, the cake is cooling on a rack, and Kyle knows it's stupid, misguided, maybe even dangerous, but what Kenny said feels true: they're safe here, for now. As long as they're together, no one can touch them.

Still, there's something nagging at him, something that won't let them linger in this quiet for long. Maybe it's that disturbing information about the real father of Karen's baby, or the idea that Kyle's real parents might be so close by, watching the hail from some other window, or the fact that Christophe seemed to have known all along that someone would kill him for what he knew. Kyle feels an almost physical discomfort, low in the back of his skull, and he's felt it before, when he was away from Christophe for too long. He pulls Stan's arms more tightly around him and thinks about the one thing in Christophe's letter that comforted him: he said they'd have hope as long as Kyle found his other half by the time Christophe died. So much of what is happening is still indecipherable, but Kyle has no doubt that he's found the half of him that was missing. He can feel it when Stan holds him like this, wrapped around him from behind, keeping him warm as they watch the worst of the storm draw closer.


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N:** Sorry for the delay between chapters - I got sidetracked by a few other projects, but those are finished and I'm back to focusing solely on this story. I hope to have it finished by the end of November, we'll see how it goes

* * *

><p>The Tweak Brothers national headquarters used to be based out of Denver, but when the economy went bust Wendy let the lease run out, and now she's back in South Park, in a small space over the actual shop. It's cramped and reeks of coffee, but Wendy still has a secretary who looks at Kenny like he's about to commit a property crime when he comes up the stairs. Wendy must not be taking a lot of meetings.<p>

"Is she free?" Kenny asks, pointing at the door to Wendy's office. "I don't have an appointment or anything, but I'm a friend-"

"Hang on a second," the girl says. She's small and mousy, wearing a fuzzy fleece jacket over her work appropriate clothes. "Mrs. Testaburger?" she says when Wendy picks up the phone on the other side of the wall that separates their offices. "Yeah, there's a -" She covers the mouthpiece. "What was your name, sir?"

"Kenny."

"There's a Kenny here to see you, he says he's a friend?"

Kenny waits to hear Wendy's answer. He's fairly confident now that calling her a friend isn't much of a reach. They've been spending a lot of time together since Stan and Kyle came back, as if those two are appropriate chaperones for Wendy's visits to the McCormick residence. Kenny loves seeing her every day, because she makes him feel hopeful, offers input on his raving theories about what happened to Stan's and Kyle's memories, and brings him lunch in exchange for the beers she has at his apartment after work, all of them gathered around the bar in the kitchen while Kyle and Karen cook. It's been good, but for Kenny it's shadowed by what he knows about Tweek. He can't keep this from her and call himself a real friend.

"Hey!" Wendy says, bursting out of her office door in lieu of answering her secretary on the phone. She's got her hair pulled back, reading glasses pushed up onto her head. She grins at Kenny and waves him over. "What's up? Everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine," Kenny says. "You busy?"

"Not really. Come in, c'mere."

She's always made him feel tall in a way that other people don't, and he feels kind of massive and clumsy as he follows her into her neat little office, like he's going to knock things over. It's the information about Tweek that's making him feel this way, and he considers for the eight hundredth time that maybe he just shouldn't tell her. It's possible that she already knows about Craig and doesn't want it thrown in her face, and by Kenny of all people.

"Do you want some coffee?" she asks, going to a surprisingly basic machine on a table near the window.

"No, thanks." He's already pretty on edge. He walks over to the window as she pours some for herself, and she stands at his side while she sips from her mug, both of them surveying the street below. It's South Park's main street, lined with shops and restaurants, people huddled into overcoats as they feed parking meters and hurry through puddles of melted snow.

"Not a bad view," Kenny says. She touches his arm and smiles when he turns to her.

"What's up?" she says. "I was going to bring you lunch later."

"I know, just. I wanted to talk to you."

"Yeah?" She rubs his arm, and she's killing him with this stuff, just killing him. He feels like a twelve-year-old girl, keeping a running tab of all her probably accidental touches, returning to the ones he liked best when he's alone on the couch at night and listening to murmur of Stan and Kyle doing their thing in his bedroom.

"Everything's just so-" Kenny says, and he knew he should have practiced his phrasing, but at some point winging it seemed like a better idea. "Screwed up," he says. "But I feel, like - it's good? Too, you know? I mean, I've been happy, since they came back. It's been good, like. Seeing everybody again."

"It's very strange," Wendy says, nodding. "But I know what you mean. I keep catching myself thinking that things are back to normal, which makes no sense. I guess it's just that I'm seeing you again."

"Things weren't really normal back when we were seeing each other a lot," Kenny says. He takes the reading glasses off of her head, careful not to snag them in her hair, and peers at her through them. They make everything blurry.

"I know," she says. "I can't explain it. It's just been nice."

"It's been awesome," Kenny says. He puts the reading glasses on his own head, and she smiles. She's beginning to look a little suspicious, and he's regretting that he came. It's possible that she'll hate him for telling her about Craig, and he's pretty sure he won't survive whatever's happening without her.

"Kenny, what's wrong?" she asks. "You're shivering. Are you cold? I know it's cold in here, I can't run the heat as much as I'd like to, poor Stacy wears ear muffs at her desk sometimes-"

"Butters told me something," Kenny blurts, trying to make himself believe that she'll thank him for this. "About Tweek. Awhile back. I keep meaning to tell you, but-"

"What about Tweek?" Wendy frowns. No, she definitely won't thank him for this. "Is he okay?"

"Well, yes. And no. Are you guys, ah. I mean, it's none of my business, but are you, like. Having trouble?"

Wendy stares at him for a moment, still frowning. She huffs and turns away from him, walking to her desk.

"I'd rather not talk about Tweek if it's all the same to you," she says. She sets her mug down and fiddles with some papers on her desk, avoiding Kenny's stare.

"That's the thing, though," Kenny says. "All this week, when we've been hanging out at my apartment. You never talk about him, and you don't bring him over-"

" Tweek gets stressed out at social events!" She's full-on angry now, defensive. "You know that."

"Why did you marry him?" Kenny shouts, and that was most definitely not the approach he planned to take here. Her eyes shoot open.

"Excuse me?"

"If I told you that he was cheating on you, would you even care?" Kenny asks, starting to get angry now, too, his heart pounding.

"Why the hell would you ask me that?" Wendy looks at the door to her office, which is closed, and Kenny wonders how sound proofed or not it is.

"Because he is, okay, and Butters told me, and I'm your friend, I think, and I should have told you sooner, but I was afraid you'd kill me, which is kind of what you're looking like you want to do right now-"

"No, excuse me, what?" Wendy shakes her head, moving toward him, her eyes narrowed. "Tweak doesn't cheat. Tweak is afraid of his own shadow. He wouldn't do that, he doesn't - doesn't have the fucking balls-"

"Maybe you don't know him that well," Kenny says. He walks toward her, wanting to hug her consolingly, but he's pretty sure she'd slap his hands away.

"I don't know him that well?" She scoffs and drags her hand through her hair, disordering her ponytail. "And he's, what - he's cheating on me with _Butters_?"

"No!" Kenny says, wincing at the thought, though he'd much rather see Butters with Tweak than Cartman. "With, um. Craig Tucker. They were - out together. Butters saw them. It was, uh, pretty undeniable, I heard."

"Craig Tucker? Who got your sister pregnant? That's who my husband is cheating with?"

"Well, God, I know it's weird, but is it really that hard to believe? You remember how Craig and Tweek were in high school."

"Yeah, and then Tweek's parents died, and Craig abandoned him. He was -" Wendy groans and puts her hands over her face, sitting on the edge of her desk. Kenny walks toward her, still afraid to touch her. He wants to pull her ponytail holder out so that her hair will drop free, wants to smooth it down around her face.

"I know it's hard to hear," Kenny says. "It was hard for me to tell you, and I'm a pussy for waiting, but, ah. You should know."

Wendy is quiet for awhile, staring into space. Kenny feels like he should give her an encouraging pat, and also like she probably needs some space, so he stands there staring at her, his hands hanging at his sides, and thinks about how she used to take care of him. He's been thinking about that a lot recently, after years of not allowing himself to remember it at all, because it hurt too much. It still hurts, but seeing her like this, at a loss, makes him remember the way she was when he couldn't even tell the floor from the ceiling. She would be so hard, telling him to stop being a selfish shit, to think of his sister, but then when she brushed her fingers over his hollow cheeks, later, when Butters was elsewhere, she was the softest thing he'd ever known.

"You asked me why I married him," she says when she speaks again, her voice hollow and her eyes still unfocused. "You want to hear a funny story?"

"Sure." Kenny takes her glasses off of his head and returns them to hers, threading the temples in through her hair. She looks up at him and seems to have lost her train of thought for a moment, her mouth hanging open. "Your hair's falling down," he says, because she seems to need a nudge before she'll be able to speak again. She makes a small sound that's somewhere between irritation and gratitude, and pulls the hair tie from her sagging ponytail, letting her hair glide down over her shoulders.

"You'd already stopped coming to school," she says. "It was senior year, and you were working at the garage. I used to drive by on the way to school and make sure your car was there. I didn't want you to think I was checking up on you, like I didn't trust you to stay clean, but I needed to know."

"You could have checked up on me," Kenny says, though he would have hated that, and they both know it. It would have sent him spiraling back down into the dark, knowing that she worried about him. He had to forget who he'd been in order to come back to life for good, and that meant forgetting her, and what her fingertips had felt like on his cheek. She closes her eyes.

"I wouldn't always see your car," she says. "I guess your schedule wasn't the same every day. And this was one of those days when it wasn't there, and those were always bad days. I would be on edge and I wouldn't be able to focus at school. I pulled into the school parking lot, and I was angry, because it was so much easier to get angry at you than to be sad. I was running late, there was nobody around, and I walked up to the back door by the parking lot where all the honors students parked, and there you were."

"There I was?"

"There you were, sitting on the steps, and you had your head down, and your hands over your face, and when I got closer I could hear that you were sobbing your eyes out. I thought, 'oh, God. He's trying to come back to school. He's afraid of what they'll all say about him, how they'll treat him, but he wants to come back, he's ready to come back to us for real.' And I ran to you, Kenny." She opens her eyes, and he wants to touch her now, he needs to, but he's frozen, because he doesn't remember this at all.

"I ran to you," she says. "And I thought, 'as soon as I get my arms around him, he'll be okay.' I was desperate. I'd missed you so much, and I knew you didn't want to see me-"

"Wendy-"

"I knew it, but I thought you'd come to the honors parking lot because you needed me, because you knew I'd be there, and I just - I still remember this so vividly, because it felt like the most important moment of my fucking life, like what I was put here to do, to be there for you, to get my arms around you and just hold you until you were okay."

"I don't," Kenny says, shaking his head, his eyes starting to get wet. "Why can't I remember this?"

"Because it wasn't you." Wendy moans and looks to the window. "It was Tweek. His parents had died two weeks before, and it was his second day back at school, and, ah. Poor Tweek. I got there, I fell down next to him and grabbed him, pulled him against me, and when he looked up, oh. Poor Tweek. He was so broken, and I couldn't show him that it wasn't him I wanted to hold like that. I would have comforted him anyway, I would have sat next to him and put my arm around him and let him cry on my shoulder, but I wouldn't have held him like that, the way I did, like nothing else mattered, if I hadn't thought he was you. If I hadn't wanted it to be you."

Kenny doesn't want to start crying, because in all that time, even when they found him already half dead, he never cried in front of her. He turns away and walks to the window, sniffling manfully.

"We were both just - devastated," Wendy says, and she's crying a little now herself. "Him because of his parents, and how, how his friends couldn't handle it, they didn't know how to talk to him anymore, Craig was just - ah, God, Craig failed him. Maybe I knew, maybe I could tell, a little, that Craig was - something to him, but Craig wasn't there when it mattered, and I couldn't be there for you anymore, and we needed each other, okay? We used to really need each other, me and Tweek."

She's crying into her hands, and Kenny should go to her, but this was the hard part, always. If he goes to her, she'll see that it was fake, when he used to laugh in those motel rooms, telling her and Butters that they were wasting their time, because he had died before and would die again and it would never mean anything. But she knows that, probably, already. She wouldn't have kept coming back for him all those times if she didn't know that he was lying when he said he didn't need her.

He goes to her and picks her up off the desk, to show her that he's strong now, not the skin and bones she used to drag into motel showers to blast with cold water, his clothes still on. That was some other body, and this one has never been manhandled by a john or stabbed by a dirty needle. This one is clean enough to touch her, so he holds her while she cries, her arms tight around his neck, legs wrapped around his waist. She's saying his name like she can't believe it's him this time, like she has to keep reminding herself.

"It should have been me," Kenny says when his voice is strong enough. He's rubbing her back, his arms starting to shake. "That day. I wish it had been me."

"I loved you so much," she says, sobbing like she's mad at herself for it. "You thought you were some social work project for me, like I was just this sanctimonious asshole-"

"No, Wendy-"

"But I loved you," she says, pulling back. She's a mess, a strand of hair stuck to her bottom lip, her cheeks soaked with tears. "I was so in love with you."

"Why?" Kenny says, making no attempt to hide his disbelief. She laughs and smooths her hair away from her lip, sniffles.

"Because. When we were kids, you said I'd had this amazing boyfriend who held my hand when he walked me home from school. And I thought it was you, I mean - I wanted it to be you. You finally took your hood off and talked to me, and you were so cute, Kenny. I couldn't believe how cute you'd been inside that coat, all that time."

"But - I was crazy, I mean. You thought I was."

"At first I just thought you were trying to flirt with me. Then you just, you wanted so badly for someone to believe you. For me to believe you. It was like watching you slip away, and there was nothing I could do. Later, when Butters told me where you were, what you were doing - I wasn't going to let you slip away again. Even if it meant you couldn't look me in the eye after I'd helped you."

A dangerous succession of thoughts about the reason for that wells up between Kenny's ribs, and he has to sit down. He backs up against the couch under the window and drops onto it, still holding Wendy, pulling her against his chest and hugging her there so that she won't see his eyes get wet again.

"I was disgusting," he says, his foot bouncing on the carpet, because somehow that's helping him not to lose it for real. "You - what you must have thought-"

"That's the sick thing, yeah," she says, sitting back. He chews his tongue when she touches his face, her thumbs stroking over his cheekbones. "It didn't matter. How we found you, what you were doing. I still wanted you for myself. I hated anyone who'd touched you because you should have been mine."

He wants to kiss her. It's an alien feeling in general, but not when it comes to her. She's right there, touching him, holding on to him, wanting it, but he doesn't remember how to kiss. He'll do it wrong. He closes his eyes and presses his face to hers, and she does the work for him, the hard part: her lips touch his, then her tongue, coaxing his lips apart, pressing into him, so warm, her tongue stroking against his. He moans and pulls back, though that means letting her see his eyes, which are overflowing now, leaking.

"I did love Tweek," she says, whispering. "I do. But not like I loved you. He was the one I wanted to take care of, my little project. You were the one I just - wanted. I want you so much, Kenny, still, Jesus-"

He kisses her again, wet and sloppy, trying to do too much. She doesn't seem to mind how out of practice he is, just writhes against him and sucks at his tongue when he licks into her mouth. She tastes like coffee, cream, sugar, and, distantly, bananas. He'd forgotten how good this was, the first rush of desperate contact, but his cock must remember well enough, because he's getting hard. It's been happening again lately, for the first time in years, when he lets himself think about her. She's pushing at his coat, and he's letting her take it off, but when her hands go to the hem of his sweater, he gasps and stiffens.

"Sorry," she says, panting, her lips still bumping his. "I know my hands are cold."

"No - it's okay, just. Ah. It's been a long time. I haven't done this in a long time."

"Me either," she says. She rolls her ass down against his erection, moaning. "Fuck, it's been so long. I didn't think I could still get this wet."

"Shit, Wendy." He'd been ready to slam on the brakes, too scared to try so much all at once, and that might have been the one motherfucking thing that could actually tug him forward: the idea of Wendy's panties getting sticky for him, because she wants him, she wants his dick, needs it-

Oily memories of other people who've wanted his dick spill into his mind, but no, no, they wanted him for other things, they wanted to watch him squirm like an insect and crawl around the floor, picking up their money with his teeth-

"Here, feel it," Wendy says, softly, calling him back. She takes his hand and brings it down between her thighs, spreading them for him. She's wearing a skirt, a short one, he noticed that when he came in, and her stockings must be thigh highs, because there's nothing between Kenny's fingers and that wet heat but a satiny pair of panties. She exhales and lets her head fall back while he rubs her, her breath stuttering.

"Yeah," she says when she tips forward again, her forehead knocking against his. "Yeah - yuh, you feel that? Mhmm, Kenny." She pries her eyes open and grins at him, still rolling her hips into his touch. "The fuh - first time I came, when I was a girl? I was thinking about you, how you knew things the other boys didn't, how you'd, _unh_. You'd know how to touch me."

"Jesus Christ," he breathes out, only now finding his voice, and barely. He kisses her hard, his fingers slipping in around her underwear, pushing them aside. They both moan when he touches the bare, sticky heat of her, and she arches, standing up a little higher on her knees. It's not true anymore, he doesn't know how to touch a woman, only maybe he does, because she's moaning low in her chest, her eyebrows pinched, and she's soaking wet for him, turning to liquid in his hands.

"Right there," she says, nodding when he thumbs her clit, rubbing the hood down and then teasing it up again, pulling desperate little whines from her. "Yeh- yeah, Kenny, yeah, please, oh, God, yeah."

Instinctive and hungry, he pushes a finger inside her, thinking about how good that tight heat would feel around his cock, moaning when she clenches and shouts. She kisses him while she comes, shuddering, and he pulls his hand from between her legs so he can hold her with both arms.

"Oh, God," she says, panting against his mouth, the haze in her eyes beginning to clear. "Jesus, I don't-" She pushes her hair back, dislodging the reading glasses. "I can't believe I just did that. God, you must think I'm insane."

"Yeah, that's totally what I'm thinking." Kenny smirks and drags his cock up against her ass, tipping her toward him in the process. "C'mere," he says, already licking into her mouth. She moans feebly and kisses him back, her hands sliding into his hair.

"I'm acting like a crazy person," she says, whispering like this is their secret, searching his eyes for something - judgment? "Kenny, ah. I'm sorry, I just, like, _attacked_ you."

"I'll survive," Kenny says, smiling, kissing her again. He can't believe how loose and safe he feels at the same time, wants to giggle like a lunatic, because he was afraid he would never be able to do this again, and damn sure never thought he'd get to do it with her.

"Do you have a condom?" she asks, whispering this in his ear. He moans and shakes his head.

"I'm clean, though," he says. "I haven't. Since that day, you know. At the clinic."

Wendy leans back, frowning a little, and shit, he shouldn't have said that. He tries to laugh it off, shrugging.

"Kenny - you." She's got her hands on his chest, so she'll feel his heart pounding, but the heavy petting could explain that. "You're talking about the day me and Butters took you to the clinic, ah. To get you tested?"

"Yeah." He's flushing now, he can feel it on his face. That day was such rank humiliation, Butters crying with relief when Kenny miraculously didn't have any STDs, thanks to the brand new body he was inhabiting. The one he's in now isn't the same one he had back then, but there's definitely no threat of STDs these days. "Just, um. You know, I needed some time off."

"Kenny." She touches his face, and he doesn't want her to do this thing, not now, where she feels so sorry for him that she shakes. "We were sixteen when we went to that clinic."

"Yeah."

"That's - ten years-"

"I know, I just, I needed some time off."

She's studying his face, and he's afraid he's managed to disgust her, that she's seeing the damage all over him, the stuff that lingered, the stuff even a new body could never erase. When she kisses him again it's slow, careful, but he doesn't taste pity on her tongue. It's sympathy, understanding, compassion, and he lets her give it to him, all of it, the things that he didn't know how to accept from her when they were kids.

"Me and you, we're not so different," she says, eyelashes fluttering. "My marriage - is not - we don't have sex. We did when we were younger, but it was never, um. Our minds were elsewhere."

"Did you think about me?" Kenny asks, something proud and primal flushing through his chest, his hands sliding down to cup her ass. She nods slowly, like a little girl answering honestly though she knows she'll get in trouble.

"I wondered how big you were," she says, and she reaches down to rub his erection. He hisses, flinching, because no one has touched him there since - but he lets his head fall back and his mind go blank, watching her through lidded eyes while she explores his dimensions through his jeans.

"That feel big enough for you?" he asks, because he might not be very confident when it comes to sex anymore, but he knows he's got a big cock. She nods, again, slowly.

"I can't without a condom, though," she says.

"I'm clean, I swear to God, I'd never touch you if I wasn't-"

"I know, shh," she cups his face with her free hand, touching her nose to his. "I believe you. Just, ha, Kenny. I'm not on birth control, alright?"

"Oh, right. That."

"Yes, that."

They kiss, and she keeps rubbing him, and he's going to come soon, anyway, would never make it all the way into her without blowing this load he's been holding back for ten years.

"Can I-" she says when he starts pushing his hips up against her hand, hard and desperate, needing just a little more friction, almost afraid to get it. "Can I, um, unzip you?" she asks, and it's like they're still kids, new at this, making out in the backseat of a car and not in an office at her husband's family business.

"Yeah," Kenny says, and he's tempted to tease her for asking, but she's just trying to respect his boundaries, and he gets that, appreciates it. He smiles up at her and kisses her cheek. "You can. I trust you."

"Oh – Kenny." She glues her mouth to his as she eases his zipper down, the wet heat of her tongue keeping him focused, keeping him safe, his memories of the motel rooms and those men who ripped his pants off without asking still there at the edge of his consciousness, but far enough away to feel irrelevant to this moment, ten years later, when he's finally clean enough to feel her touch without wanting to spare her his grime. Her hand is warm now, and he moans when she grips him, her thumb sliding through the slit. She grins.

"You're wet, too," she says, whispering.

"Can I?" he asks, pushing his hand up under her shirt to feel her bra strap. They're right in his face, bouncy and cute, and he hasn't cared about tits since he was a kid, back when sex was still for fun, but hers look too perfect not to suck on properly. He just hopes he can get his mouth around one before he comes, because she's getting him pretty close.

"Yeah, God," she says, reaching back to help him unhook her bra. When it's unclasped he starts unbuttoning her shirt, his hand shaking, and she growls in frustration, ripping the rest of the buttons open.

"Jesus Christ," he says, looking up into her eyes as he shoves her shirt down off of her shoulders, then her bra straps.

"You know, I was like you," she says, her breath coming fast as he slides her bra down. "I was – early, I, I wanted sex before the other girls did."

"Fuck," Kenny says, and he buries his face between her breasts, inhaling the scent of her. "I would have given it to you."

"Ha – yeah, I know – ah, _Kenny_."

He comes with her nipple in his mouth, sucking on it while she shouts and pulls his hair, pumping him dry with her other hand. It's masterpiece of a moment, all of his favorite things, the things he thought he couldn't love anymore. He tips back onto the sofa and pulls her with him, kissing her while the aftershocks buzz through him, his body still jerking with surprise, because it forgot it could do that. She whispers his name as he comes back down, kisses his face, smoothes her hand over the section of hair that she tugged on.

"I stayed here for you," Kenny says, knowing that she'll think he means South Park. He wishes he could tell her about his deaths, but it would wreck her to know that he suffered like that, so maybe it's better that she'll never know.

"I did, too," she says, still in his lap, cupping his face. "For you." She laughs and goes limp against him, her face buried against his neck. "I fucked up my shirt," she says. "Jesus, you make me crazy."

"You can have my shirt," he says. "I'll trade you."

"Yeah, that'll look real professional." She sighs and sits back, and he wants to pull her down again, to let her rest. He's paralyzed by how good she looks like this, her shirt spilled open and her lacy bra in her lap, nipples still hard, cheeks still pink. He could do this all day, between naps.

"What's wrong?" he asks. "Don't feel bad about Tweek. He cheated on you first."

"It's not that," she says. She moans and rubs a hand over her eyes. "I mean, it is, but. It's just, everything. It's just this bad feeling I have."

"Bad feeling?" Kenny pulls her closer, his hands sliding across her back.

"Like we're too late," Wendy says, peering down into his face, her eyebrows hitching. "Like we waited too long to do this. Like the world is ending and we, ah. It's stupid."

"No, tell me," Kenny says, his heart pounding.

"Like we waited until the end of the world," she says. "And now we'll only have a short time together."

"We're not even thirty."

"I know – it's not that. Don't you feel it, too? Don't you know what I mean?"

He does, but fuck that. He's not letting her go again. He kisses her neck and shakes his head.

"The world's not ending," he says. "Not on my watch."

Lunch time comes, though the persistent gray outside is no indication. Kenny's stomach growls, and Wendy insists on having Stacy order them some food. They fool around again while they wait for it to arrive, and Wendy makes Kenny go to the office door to retrieve it, hiding in the corner with her ripped shirt pulled over her chest. He looks back at her and grins just before he pulls the door open, and she waves an admonishing hand at him, blushing, her knees pressed together.

"Your takeout," Stacy says dryly when Kenny opens the door. She shoves a box full of Chinese food cartons and little containers of soup into his hands, fortune cookies tucked into translucent bags with red zodiac symbols on them.

"Thanks," Kenny says, trying to give her a charming smile. She just stares.

"You can tell Wendy I'm taking my lunch now," she says. "A long lunch."

"I'm sure that'll be fine. Thanks again."

"I'm so embarrassed," Wendy says when Kenny brings the food inside, Stacy's footsteps retreating on the other side of the door.

"Don't be," Kenny says. "All high powered CEOs get laid in their offices."

"Oh, ha. I'm so high powered that I clean the windows of the shop myself now, to save money."

"That's okay," Kenny says, unpacking City Wok delicacies. "Working with your hands keeps you honest. I'd know."

They ordered too much and they eat like pigs: dumplings and sweet and sour pork, fried shrimp, egg drop soup, wontons and rice. Kenny is stuffed by the time they retire to the couch with their fortune cookies. He pulls Wendy into his lap and moans when her weight rests against his overly full stomach. She grins and kisses his jaw, snapping her cookie open.

"Well?" he says while she reads it.

"I always get these ones that are more advice than a prediction," Wendy says. "'Don't pursue happiness. Create it.'"

"That's not bad advice," Kenny says. He cracks his open and reads it. Wendy puts her head on his shoulder and reads along with him.

"'Good things come to those who wait,'" Wendy reads. "'Be patient.'"

"Noted," Kenny says, flicking his tongue over the pulse point on her neck. She laughs and pulls her knees to her chest, leaning back to look at him.

"Does that refute my bad feeling?" she asks.

"I don't know," Kenny says. "Do you still have it?"

He can see her wanting to lie to him, but they've done enough of that. She nods.

"Hey," he says, squeezing her. "I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you. To any of us."

"Kenny, who are they?" she asks, and he knows who she's talking about. "Why are they here? Why now?"

"Well," he says. "I can answer two of those questions. They're Stan and Kyle, and they're our friends. I think you can feel that when we're with them, and they can feel it, too, in you. They're here because we're close to figuring out why everyone else forgot them, and why they couldn't remember us. The now part is the only one I'm not sure about, but we'll figure it out. Together, the four of us, we'll figure it out."

He leaves her to her work a few hours later, after she's promised to come over to the apartment when she's done with her afternoon conference calls and other chores. Being away from her feels different now, almost physically intense, as if he left some essential organ with her and he's not going to be fully functional until they're together again. For some reason this makes him smile, the fact that he's walking around without some significant part of himself. He understands why she has a bad feeling, but his is bigger, and it's the feeling that maybe they're going to go through hell, but they have before and they came out okay, so why not this time, too? Maybe that's easy for him to say.

Back at the apartment, Kyle is baking, as usual, flitting around the kitchen with flour on his sweater. Kenny appreciates his efforts, and snoops around to see what he's creating at the moment: sugar cookies and a loaf of mystery bread.

"Zucchini bread," Kyle says, slapping Kenny's hand away when he pokes at it.

"Fancy," Kenny says. He gets a beer from the fridge and hops up on the counter, glad that he took the whole day off of work. He figured that the fallout from telling Wendy about Tweek would require some free time, but he had no idea that those hours would be used so well. Kyle gives him a suspicious look, still wearing an oven mitt on one hand.

"Why are you so happy?" Kyle asks.

"I don't know," Kenny says, unable to stop grinning. "Where's Karen?"

"Having her nap."

"Stan?"

Kyle pulls off his oven mitt. "He's at the town hall, doing research. I don't know what he thinks he'll find."

"No, that's good, that's a good idea. Kyle?"

"What?"

"Can I have one of your cookies?" Kenny asks, again trying to make his apologetic expression charming. It works better on Kyle than it did on Wendy's secretary; Kyle groans, but he brings Kenny two still-warm sugar cookies wrapped in a napkin, and even gets him a glass of milk.

"How are they?" Kyle asks, and he actually seems anxious about Kenny's opinion. When Kenny pats Kyle's cheek fondly he barely flinches, just frowns a little.

"Fucking awesome," Kenny says, and Kyle beams.

"Well, um, good, because I was worried I used too much flour. Want another one?"

"Hell yeah."

They eat cookies together in silence for awhile, and Kenny thinks about telling Kyle about Wendy, wants to gush to someone about what he's discovered today, that the part of himself he thought he'd lost was there all along, waiting for the right moment, for her. He's not sure why he's afraid to try to explain it, maybe because it doesn't feel real yet, or maybe there's some lingering fear that Kyle will tell Stan that Kenny is macking on his girlfriend. Kenny always thought she was hot, even back in the day. He'd never wanted anyone as badly as he wanted her in the aftermath of her fight with Cartman, when she was bloody and victorious, a fucking Valkyrie. He's going to tell her that later, when she's in his lap again, in the dark of the living room after the others have gone to bed.

"You're not high, are you?" Kyle asks, elbowing him. Kenny laughs and lifts his beer.

"Half a beer in? Not likely."

"Seriously, dude," Kyle says. "Tell me why you're so happy."

Before Kenny can, the door of the apartment opens and Stan walks in carrying a messy handful of papers. Kyle hurries to him and accepts a kiss on the cheek, helping him out of his coat.

"Did you find anything?" Kenny asks. "Kyle said you were doing research at town hall."

"Um, yeah, I found – something." Stan gives Kyle a wary look. "Can I have a beer?" he says to Kenny.

"You know it, dude." Kenny gets one from the fridge and opens it with his teeth, enjoying Kyle's squeamish look as he passes it to Stan. "So? What'd you find?"

"Well," Stan says. He laughs a little and drinks from the beer, setting the papers on the counter beside Kyle's cooling sugar cookies. "There were only two people with the first name 'Christophe' on record in South Park's history."

"Oh, God," Kyle says, hooking his arm through Stan's. "So? A dead end?"

"Funny you should say that," Stan says, laughing again, nervously. "The first one was one of the original settlers, back in 1899 – Christophe, uh-" He checks the papers. "Christophe Marté. The second one was a kid named Christophe Pillet whose parents moved here from France thirty years ago."

"France! What! Stan!" Kyle tugs on Stan's arm. "And only thirty years ago-"

"Yeah, um, just wait a second before you get excited. This kid, he was our age, and his parents moved out of South Park about two years before we lost our memories."

"Jesus, Stan, that's amazing!" Kyle is bouncing on his heels, laughing. "Did they move to London?"

"As far as I can tell, they moved to Canada."

"Is there some reason they might have given up their kid for adoption before they moved?" Kenny asks, worried about the slightly nauseous look on Stan's face.

"Um," Stan says. "No. 'Cause they didn't, ah. They didn't have a kid when they moved away."

"What are you talking about?" Kyle says. "They had a kid – Christophe, you said, there was a boy here, our age, with that name, you just said-"

"Kyle." Stan glances at Kenny, then back to Kyle. "The Christophe who lived in South Park, the French kid? According to the records in South Park, he, um."

"What?" Kenny says, a chill sliding across his skin, because he thinks he knows what Stan is about to say, though it's impossible. Stan looks at Kenny and shakes his head.

"He died when he was eight years old."


	16. Chapter 16

Butters is watching a news report about a blizzard that's supposed to hit next week when he hears Eric's car in the driveway. The instinct to hop up and prepare things - a beer, a snack, himself - jumps in his chest like a startled animal, but he doesn't get up. He pulls the blanket he's huddled beneath up to his chin and keeps his eyes settled on the television, his jaw tightening. Under the blanket, he's still wearing his pajamas. He hasn't showered, hasn't bought or prepared anything for dinner, and he hasn't really eaten much himself all day, just some crackers with his tea. He doesn't like living like this, hates it in fact, but it seems to be his only alternative. If things go back to the way they were, Eric won't know that he was wrong. He's not sure that Eric will ever be capable of understanding that he was wrong about something, but he's definitely noticed the change in Butters, even as he tiptoes around it.

"You came home for lunch?" Butters says when Eric walks into the living room, snow flurries melting in his hair, a Burger King bag in one hand and a large fountain drink in the other.

"Well, yeah," Eric says, frowning at him and sitting down across the room, in his over-sized armchair. "I'm on suicide watch aren't I?"

Butters rolls his eyes and pulls his blanket up higher. "I'm not suicidal, Eric."

"Yeah, sure." Eric is already eating, talking with his mouth full and staring at the television. "Get over here and eat some french fries. You're getting too fucking skinny."

"I can be skinny if I want to," Butters says. He keeps pushing, and he hates it, but he needs to know how far Eric will let him go before this unravels completely. Before, he always assumed Eric would throw him out if he didn't prepare his meals promptly, and he'd liked that, hadn't he? He'd liked some part of it, but the more he lets things slide, the more he realizes that he wasn't entirely happy before, either.

"What's this shit?" Eric asks, gesturing to the television with his half-eaten cheeseburger. "A storm?"

"Obviously," Butters says, since the words DEADLY BLIZZARD MOVES WEST are splashed across the bottom of the news report.

"Hey, fucking excuse me for trying to make conversation," Eric says.

Butters bites his lip, wondering if he should apologize. He doesn't like talking to Eric this way, but he can't seem to stop. He's still angry about the fact that Eric forbade him from communicating with Kenny, and he's angry at himself for halfway obeying him, because he still hasn't been over to Kenny's apartment to meet those lost boys. He's talked to Kenny on the phone, a lot in fact, but he tends to do it when Eric isn't home. Some stubborn part of him still wants to make him happy, to do as he asked.

"Great, we're gonna have to staff the fucking grocery stores," Eric says, muttering as he watches footage of stores in Nebraska, shelves cleared off and products spilled across the floor.

"I should go shopping," Butters says, though the thought of leaving the house seems impossible. He hasn't been anywhere since his fight with Eric, and has barely even left the couch except to go to the downstairs bathroom. Clyde Frog is his only sleeping companion, and he's tucked between Butters' legs under the blanket. "Before they run out of milk and eggs and stuff."

"Fuck that, you're too sickly to be out in public," Eric says. "I'll go on my way home. Since I do fucking everything now. Why not shopping, too? Yeah, sure, great."

"I could go," Butters says, but just talking about it is making his voice waver, his eyes wet. Eric hears the change in his voice and drags his eyes away from the television, studying him while he chews on a french fry.

"Goddammit, Butters," he says. He wipes his hands on his uniform pants. He's still wearing his coat, his gun, everything. "Do I need to take the rest of the day off or what?"

"Why would you?" Butters asks. He regains his composure, straightening his shoulders. Eric wants him to fall apart so he can put him together again, all of the pieces of their old life clicking back into place, but Butters won't let him, not this time. "I'm fine. Go if you need to."

Eric stares at him for awhile, his expression flickering between anger and self pity, as if he wants to throw a tantrum about how Butters is affecting him but also doesn't want to admit that this is bothering him at all. Butters looks back to the television, his heart clenching when Eric sighs and crumples up the remains of his lunch.

"Back to the fucking grind, then," Eric says. "You just sit there and enjoy your life of leisure, that's great, that's fine." He goes into the kitchen and pitches the fast food debris into the trash. Butters hears the water running at the kitchen sink, and he chews the tip of his tongue, blinking back tears and trying to focus on the weather radar that shows a big, red mass of blizzard making its way toward Colorado. When Eric returns from the kitchen, Butters expects him to pass by and head back out the door, but he comes to the couch and stands there until Butters looks up at him.

"What?" Butters says, making his voice hard. Eric huffs and looks at the television, then back to Butters.

"Uh, nothing," he says, and Butters has to swallow down a whimper when he realizes that Eric was going to kiss him goodbye. He almost calls out to him when he turns and heads to the door, but he makes himself be strong. Eric can't kiss him until he's apologized, even if Butters wants it so bad that he feels like he'll break in two, a sob welling in his chest when Eric slams the front door on his way out. Butters tips over onto his side and blinks his tears away, hugging Clyde Frog inside the blanket. It's been so hard, sleeping down here every night, knowing Eric is up there, warm and especially squishy from all the fast food, that he would reclaim Butters without a word if Butters just slipped under the blankets and cuddled up against him. His body would give anything to be pinned down by Eric and treated like that helpless little person who belongs to him, to get fucked and filled and undeniably claimed, but his mind won't let him do it, and his heart is still sort of on the fence, which is becoming increasingly painful.

He falls asleep on the couch, Clyde Frog tucked under his chin and the news giving way to reruns of old sitcoms, and when he wakes again it's already gotten dark outside, though it's just half past five o'clock. Eric won't be home for another hour, unless he has to stay late making preparations for the blizzard. Butters sits up, groggy and almost feverish with hunger, and he startles when he realizes what woke him. Someone is knocking on the front door rather desperately.

He gets off the couch and stands there for a moment, frightened. No one ever comes to their house. Eric has friends at work, but he doesn't bring them here, has never been interested in entertaining company. Thinking it might be Kenny, Butters hurries to the foyer, because whoever is out there sounds like he's in trouble, the knocking growing more frantic when they see Butters' shadow pass behind the curtains over the windows that frame the front door. Nervously, Butters draws the curtain back to see who's out there. It's Tweek, and he looks terrible, crying and shivering, not even wearing a coat.

"What's wrong?" Butters asks when he pulls the door open, hurrying to get Tweek into the warmth of the house. "What happened?"

"W-Wendy," Tweek says, his teeth chattering as Butters rubs his shoulders. "Sh-she found out about me and Craig, oh, fuck, oh _shit_, did you tell her, was it you?"

"No, of course not," Butters says. He considers the fact that he told Kenny, and he probably shouldn't have, but he thought Kenny could keep a secret. "Come in, you're freezing," Butters says. He locks the front door and checks the window to see if anyone has chased Tweek here, an angry Wendy maybe, but the street is empty.

"Fuck, I'm dead, I'm finished," Tweek says, gasping sobs as he continues to shiver. "Ah - I'll lose my company, she'll take it from me, it's hers anyway, I never did anything with it, oh fuck, oh Jesus, my parents, if they knew-"

"Shh, c'mon, come get warm." Butters brings him into the living room, discreetly setting Clyde Frog aside and guiding Tweek down onto the couch, wrapping the blanket around him.

"I'm s-sorry, man, I just, I didn't know where else to go," Tweek says as Butters sits beside him, wrapping an arm around him and drawing him close. He's even skinnier than Butters, no body fat for warmth, and it's well below freezing outside, not the kind of weather that should be braved without so much as a jacket.

"Wendy was real mad at you?" Butters says, hugging Tweek when he crumples against Butters' chest, still crying.

"N-no! She was all calm, and said she needed to talk to me, gah, it was terrible! It's - it's too much pressure, I couldn't handle it, Jesus, I bolted. I bet she's already got the papers drawn up, I bet this means I forfeit our assets, oh, fuck, I'm such a fucking loser, I should just give her the company anyway, fuck, I'm a failure-"

"Stop that," Butters says, stroking Tweek's hair. "You are not. Have you told Craig yet? Maybe you two could be together now-"

"Craig?" Tweek shoots up and grabs Butters by the shoulders, startling him. "Are you kidding me? Craig doesn't like drama. Craig doesn't want to be s-seen with me in polite society. I'm not even allowed to go to his house! That's why I came here, Jesus, I don't have anybody, he doesn't even count-"

"Okay, alright, shh." Butters pulls Tweek back down against his chest and lets him cry there, rubbing his neck until his skin starts to warm a little. "You just need to calm down, that's all. Everything's gonna be just fine. Wendy won't take your company from you-"

"Yes, she will, dude! I cheated on her! She's supposed to get some kind of, like, compensation for that, right? You should have seen how calm she was, Jesus, it freaked me out! I don't know why she even married me, she's too good for me and I'm just a little f-freak-"

"Tweek, no, that's not true." Butters squeezes him tighter, his head dropping down to rest against Tweek's. It feels so good to hold someone again, to stroke someone's hair and try to calm them. Butters knew he'd been starving for human touch, but he didn't expect to get such comfort from holding someone who isn't Eric.

"God, I'm so stupid," Tweek says, crying more softly now, his hand closed around the front of Butters' pajama top. "I never should have gone back to Craig, oh, Jesus, I ruined everything, and for what? He's not there when I n-need him, he's never there when I need him."

Butters considers shushing him, then decides he probably needs to get this out. There's a twinge between Butters' ribs as he listens to Tweek's regrets about Craig, about how he couldn't let go of a relationship that offered him nothing but sex.

"When I lost my parents, where the hell was he?" Tweek says, his sobs intensifying again. "He was s-supposed to love me, Jesus, but he doesn't know how to love anyone, he only knows how to fuck people over."

Butters strokes Tweek's hair, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that's sinking lower, toward the pit of his stomach. Where was Eric when Butters chose Eric over his parents? Did he suggest a compromise, try to get them to speak to Butters when Butters was too devastated to face them? No, he said good riddance, put his feet up on the coffee table and told Butters he was better off without those assholes.

"I'm so alone, Jesus," Tweek says, starting to wear out, limp against Butters' chest as Butters settles back against the couch cushions, cradling him. "Without Wendy I don't have anyone."

"You do, too," Butters says, his stomach twisting. Is that why he's still in this house, sleeping on Eric's couch? Who would he go to if Eric did decide he'd had enough of his freeloading behavior and threw him out? Kenny has Karen and her baby to take care of, and now those lost boys, too; he's already given up his bed for them. Butters holds on to Tweek more tightly, burying his face in Tweek's hair. It smells like coffee and cinnamon.

"Jesus, t-thank you, thank you for letting me in," Tweek says. He twists so that he's curled up in Butters' lap, wiping his face on his pajama top. "I don't know what I would have done, I would have frozen to death, and n-no one would even give a shit, they wouldn't have found me until spring-"

"Stop that," Butters says. "I'm glad you came here. I care about you, Tweek, lots of people do." He kisses Tweek's forehead without really meaning to, but it doesn't feel so strange, and Tweek moans with appreciation, trying to squirm closer, though he's already as close as Butters can get him. Tweek's eyes are closed, and he's only shivering a little now. Butters strokes his hair and hums a makeshift lullaby under his breath, thinking of his most secret fantasy, the only one he'd never share with Eric. Sometimes he imagines they could have a little baby together, through some sort of magic, and their baby would have Eric's brown eyes, and Butters would rock him to sleep just like this. Butters would take such good care of their baby, and Eric would be a good dad, the kind who was always on his son's side, no matter what. Butters presses his face into Tweek's hair again, closing his eyes. It's just a dumb fantasy. Even if he could have a baby somehow, Eric wouldn't want that.

He falls asleep, warm and cozy as the temperature drops outside. Tweek sleeps, too, murmuring and twitching a little, calming again when Butters strokes his hair. It's nice, but there's a little pinch of sadness in it, too, because Butters wants to be the one who's curled up and held, pressed against Eric, where he always feels safe, even when they're in the middle of the wolfish crowd at Hammerheads. Half-asleep, he realizes that's why Eric took him there so many times, not just to show him off but to show him that he could protect him from anything. Butters sighs into Tweek's hair, wishing that he'd let Eric kiss him goodbye. Eric's job is dangerous and Butters worries about him every day. He curls around Tweek and shivers at the thought that something could happen to Eric during this feud that they're having, that he might have already missed his last chance to kiss Eric, and to sleep like this, like Tweek is now, curled up in his arms.

Butters wakes from a bad dream, its details ripped away from him, and he's awash in confusion for a few seconds, Tweek heavy against his chest and just beginning to wake. There are some sounds from the front door: Eric's boots, the rustle of his coat, his exhausted sigh. Butters blinks at the clock over the television, surprised to see that it's almost eight o'clock. Tweek moans, Eric calls Butters' name, and only then does Butters' sleep-soaked brain start to envision how this will look from Eric's perspective.

"What the fuck is this?" Eric asks, suddenly huge in the living room doorway, an expression on his face like he just found Butters breastfeeding a raccoon. His coat is halfway shrugged off, hanging at his elbows.

"Eric, Tweek came over because-"

"What the fuck?" Eric says, the disgust on his face twisting up more sharply. "You - you, wha-"

"Jesus, what time is it?" Tweek mumbles, groggy and blinking. He flinches when he sees Eric, grabbing for Butters' pajama top again. "Cartman! Ah-"

"You fucking asshole," Eric says, his fists curling up so tightly that they shake. He's talking to Butters.

"No, Eric," Butters says, huffing as he eases Tweek out of his lap. "Stop, don't get upset-"

"Don't get - don't get upset?" Eric laughs, high pitched and angry, and he kicks the coffee table, magazines scattering everywhere, Butters' tea cup rolling toward the stairs.

"Jesus, fuck, man!" Tweek is off the couch like a cat who's just been thrown into bath water, wide awake now.

"Eric, stop!" Butters says, standing. "Listen to me, I'm only-"

"So this is how it is?" Eric shouts, pointing a shaking finger at Butters. "You're doing this to me in my own house? In my own fucking house?"

"I'm not doing anything, and it's my house, too!"

"Like fucking hell it is!" Eric rips his coat off and slams it down to the carpet like he wants to tear a hole straight through the globe. "This is why you're sleeping on the couch, because that's where he fucks you while I'm at work? While I'm, while I'm out fucking _providing_ for you-"

"He's just here because Wendy threw him out!" Butters says, shouting. Tweek is cowering near the stairs, looking around like he's trying to figure out if he'll need to jump through the living room window to escape Eric's wrath.

"Yeah, I'll bet she fucking did! I know that little slut cheats on her, but with you? With you?" Eric's voice pinches up, and for a moment Butters thinks he'll cry. He turns and growls instead, punching the wall, leaving a dent in the plaster, a framed picture jumping off the wall and clattering to the ground.

"Eric, listen to me!" Butters says, his voice starting to shake. "I wasn't doing anything, I just-"

"You were - on my, my fucking couch, with him-" Eric's fist is still pressed to the wall, and his whole body is shaking now. Butters' eyes sink down to the gun at his hip, but no, not Eric, he wouldn't, not ever.

"I swear, man, we didn't do anything!" Tweek says. "I, oh, Jesus, I was just-"

"Get the fuck out of my house!" Eric shouts, whirling on him. Tweek shrieks and bolts for the door like a terrified hamster, scampering.

"Tweek, wait!" Butters says, thinking of him out in the cold, wondering where he'll go.

"You've got some goddamn nerve, you fucking whore," Eric says, his teeth grit, face turning purple with rage. "You're going to chase after him now? That's what you're going to do?"

"You don't understand!" Butters says. His face is wet, but he's mostly just angry, still fuzzy from sleeping, living this like it's another nightmare. "He doesn't have anywhere to go!"

"Yeah?" Eric laughs again, walking backward, dragging his hands through his hair. "Guess what, motherfucker? Neither do you. You can get the fuck out of my house, too."

"Eric, _listen__to__me_!"

"Why the hell should I? Am I fucking blind? Did I not just see you with him, with my own fucking eyes? This is the way you want to play it, that's fine, that's great, but you can find someone else to foot the bill, you son of a bitch, because I'm not going to let you make a fool of me in my own fucking house!"

"I didn't do anything," Butters says, crying too hard to fully form his words. "I swear, Eric, I was just trying to make him feel better!"

"Yeah, like you do with Kenny? Oh, fuck you, don't look at me like that. I know you let that ten cent whore fuck you. He's been fucking you all along, hasn't he? You just needed me for financial support, right? Who else fucks you? Craig? Do you and Tweek work on him together? That's what you've been doing for dinner this week, yeah? Helping that piece of shit swallow Craig's come?"

"Yeah, Eric!" Butters says, trying to bury his sobs, his nails digging into his palms. "That's right, I'm just a whore, I've had everybody in town, and what do you care? You don't give a shit about me, you never did!"

"Get out, get out, get the fuck out!" Every time Eric says _out_ he slams the wall with his fist again, and Butters feels like he's going to bring the whole house down around them. Butters rushes past Eric and out the front door, grabbing his car keys on the way. He can't even feel the cold, though he's only wearing his pajamas and socks, no shoes. Tweek is waiting at the end of the driveway, his arms hugged around himself.

"Are you okay?" Tweek calls as Eric slams the front door shut. Butters can hear him bolting it, then there's the sound of things breaking, picture frames maybe.

"Come on," Butter says, sucking in a choppy breath, barely able to see straight. Tweek comes slowly, nervously, and darts for Butters car once he's close enough to reach it. He gets into the passenger seat, and Butters climbs in behind the wheel, still crying in painful jags, not sure that he'll be able to drive. All he knows is that he has to get away from here, fast.

"Holy shit, man!" Tweek says as Butters tries to bring his keys to the ignition, his hand shaking too hard to work properly. "Did he hit you?"

"No," Butters says, and for some reason the fact that Tweek thinks Eric might have makes him sob harder, because Eric wouldn't, he wouldn't, and no one will ever believe that. "Goddammit!" Butters shouts, biting hard on his lip, like it's a button that will make him stop shaking. He manages to jam the key into the ignition and turns, his tires squealing back out of the driveway as soon as the engine has turned over.

"Careful, fuck!" Tweek says. "Put your lights on!" He reaches over to do it for Butters when Butters leaves both hands around the steering wheel, unable to get them to unclench.

"I hate him, I hate him," Butters says, though somehow it's never been less true, and he wants to be back there with Eric, explaining, telling him that he would never betray him like that or use him for money, never, but Eric won't believe him, won't even listen, and now it's all ruined, because he'll also never admit that he's wrong.

"Ah - shit, okay, dude, it's, um, gonna be alright." Tweek reaches over to touch Butters' shoulder tentatively, as if he's a bomb that's about to go off. "Where, um - where the hell are we going?"

"To Kenny's," Butters says, sniffling, though he's afraid that when Kenny sees how upset he is he might do something stupid, like try to kill Eric. He attempts to get hold of himself as they make their way to Kenny's apartment, Tweek gasping every time Butters makes a sharp turn, as if he's just waiting for the car to flip over. Butters wants to tell him to stop doing that, that it's making him nervous, but he supposes Tweek has every right to be on edge after that scene at Eric's house.

"Craig used to get like this sometimes," Tweek says when Butters has quieted to sniffling, his hands still clawed around the steering wheel, knuckles white. "About Wendy. He wouldn't yell or kick things or anything like that, but it was almost worse, how quiet he'd get, and he wouldn't even look at me, oh, Jesus, and what was I supposed to do? She was my wife, gah, and he knew I wasn't really, like, attracted to her, but she took care of me, and he didn't, so what the hell did he care, fuck!"

"You were together in high school," Butters says. Talking about this is helping the hollow feeling in his stomach expand, keeping the tears from coming back. "Weren't you?"

"Sort of," Tweek says, fidgeting. He keeps yanking on his seat belt like he's expecting it to turn on him and strangle him at any moment. It's kind of annoying. "We were - gah! We were fucking, if that's what you mean."

"So how'd you end up with Wendy?" Butters asks, narrowing his eyes, still staring straight ahead, at the wispy snowfall that's dancing away from the windshield.

"Wendy, she, ah, I don't know, she was there for me when everybody else was too freaked out to deal with me. Nobody had ever met someone whose parents had died. They didn't know what to say. Craig especially. I'd - ah - I'd never seen him nervous. He got nervous around me, after my parents, um. All I - fuck, all I wanted was for him to, like, hold me, Jesus! But he started avoiding me, like he was going catch the dead parents disease or something, and, fuck, I wasn't close to any of those other guys, not after Token moved away. And Wendy, I'd hung out with her some when she was with Token, and she just, she helped me, ah, when no one else would."

"So how'd you end up back with Craig?" Butters asks.

"How'd I - shit, man, you know what it's like! He was my first, ah, everything, and, like - fuck, I mean, how'd you end up back with Cartman?"

"I got away from him for awhile," Butters says, his voice hard as nails now, though he suspects he'll crumple again as soon as he sees Kenny. "My folks sent me off to college. Then Eric's mom died, and, well. He was all alone, and I didn't want to leave him. I was happier with him than without him, no matter what he did."

"See, exactly!" Tweek says, his shoulders jumping back. "They're fucking - wizards or something, man, I'm telling you."

"We loved them," Butters says, and using the past tense makes his voice waver, even though it's a lie, to Tweek and to himself, that he doesn't still love Eric. "That's all. We just loved them."

"Well – yeah, but – why the fuck would we love people like that? What's wrong with us?"

"I don't know," Butters says, shifting his hands on the wheel, his fingers aching from how tightly he was holding it. "I just – I don't want to talk about it anymore. Turn the radio on, okay?"

They get to Kenny's, and when Butters climbs out of the car his adrenaline has faded to the point that he can feel the icy wind closing around him like a cloak that he can't shake off. He takes Tweek's elbow and leads him into the humid, vaguely cigarette-scented lobby of Kenny's building. If mustard yellow linoleum had a scent, this would be it, like years worth of unswept dust and industrial grade bug spray. Butters walks up the stairs to Kenny's apartment, pulling Tweek along with him.

"Yeah, this is good," Tweek says, nodding to himself, his teeth chattering again. "Kenny will know what to do. Kenny always knows what to do."

"Right," Butters says. Tweek doesn't know about what happened to Kenny in high school. Butters and Wendy kept that secret for him, and as far as the rest of the student body knew, Kenny just dropped out to work a shitty job like everyone had always expected him to. Butters wishes Kenny had returned the favor by keeping the secret Butters told him about Craig and Tweek, but Kenny didn't know telling Wendy would ruin Butters' life, and when Kenny pulls open the door and smiles at them, his eyebrows pinching a little in confusion, Butters isn't mad at him. Behind him, there's laughter and the smell of dinner cooking, some jazzy Christmas music playing on the stereo.

"Hey, guys, c'mon in," Kenny says. His smile fades when he sees Butters' dried tear tracks and red-rimmed eyes. "What happened?" he asks, pushing the door shut hard once they're inside. "What did Cartman do?"

"Oh, Jesus Christ!" Tweek shouts, jumping backward, his body slapping cartoonishly against the door. Butters frowns and looks at the people who are gathered in the kitchen: the lost boys from the picture, grown up now, Karen with her giant stomach, and – oh, boy. Wendy.

"Tweek, thank God!" Wendy says, holding out her hand like he's a puppy that's strayed too far. "I was so worried about you."

"I can't – I don't-" Tweek scrambles at the door handle, but he can't seem to work it.

"Hey, stop – Tweek!" Wendy jogs across the room and puts her hands on Tweek's shoulders. He peeks at her, cringing. "It's okay, really – don't – Jesus, don't act like I'm going to hit you."

"What's going on?" Karen asks.

"We didn't want to tell you," Kenny says. He's still looking at Butters, frowning, probably imagining a thousand different atrocities that Eric might have committed.

"Tell me what?" Karen asks.

"It's – it's about Craig-" Wendy says, still holding Tweek's shoulders.

"Oh, Jesus!" Tweek moans, putting his hands over his face. "I know you hate me, I'm sick, I'm so fucking humiliated-"

"Stop," Wendy says, softly. "Karen, can we use your bedroom? I need to talk to him."

"Um, sure," Karen says, though she's gone white, her eyes wide. "What about Craig, now?"

"I'll tell you in a second," Kenny says, holding up his hand. The lost boys – Stan and Kyle, Butters can't remember which is which – are standing together near the fridge, the dark-haired one sipping from a beer as if he's watching dinner theater and the red-haired one frowning at this scene while he stirs something that smells like Butters' favorite chicken and dumplings recipe.

"C'mere," Wendy says to Tweek, drawing him toward Karen's bedroom.

"I'm sorry," Tweek is muttering, starting to cry again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

"Shh, I know."

They disappear into Karen's bedroom, Wendy closing the door behind them. Karen scoffs and holds up a wooden spoon.

"Um, now can you tell me?" she asks.

"Just chill out for a second, yeah?" Kenny says. He puts his arm around Butters' shoulders. "Hey, so, Stan, Kyle – this is the guy I was telling you about, this is Butters. Butters, that's Stan, and that's – Kyle – Jesus, are you okay? You're shaking-"

"Um," Butters says, trying not to fall apart, not wanting to make a scene in front of the lost boys. He attempts a smile and lifts his hand, which is shaking so hard that Karen puts both hands over her mouth, her eyebrows arching. "Ha – hey, fellas, I'm sorry I'm kinda of, um-"

"No, ah – okay," Kenny says, tucking Butters against his side. "C'mere, just. C'mon, you're alright."

Butters doesn't really remember making his feet move, but suddenly they're in Kenny's bedroom, which, come to think of it, Butters has never seen before. It's not what he pictured, kind of spare and lonely, no girlie posters on the walls. Kenny closes the door, and Butters doesn't want to cry, he really doesn't. Kenny takes him by the shoulders and looks down into his eyes. He's furious, and he's trying to hold it back, his mouth twitching.

"What did he do?" he asks.

"Nothing – I – it was just a misunderstanding," Butters says, his voice already breaking apart. "Tweek came over, and um, I was just helping him, and Eric thought, he thought -"

"That fucking—" Kenny bites his knuckle and pulls Butters against him, holding him tight, and it doesn't make sense, how being held like this should break him down completely, but it does, and he's crying so hard. He knows the lost boys must be overhearing it, getting a bad first impression of him.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry," Butters says, and he doesn't even know who he's apologizing to, he's let so many people down. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"Shh, no," Kenny says, rocking him in his arms, squeezing him tighter. "God, just. You're safe now. You're done with him, and it's good, okay? It's good. I know he hurt you, but he's not going to hurt you again, I won't let him."

"Kenny," Butters says, trying to pour all of his protests into his pronunciation of Kenny's name, wanting to make him understand somehow. It feels good, having someplace to come to when there's no place else, even if it's overcrowded and smells like linoleum, but Butters doesn't want to be here, not really, and he can't stop thinking about Eric, alone and breaking things, thinking that Butters doesn't love him.

"You're okay now," Kenny says. "I've got you, alright, and you can stay here as long as you want. Jesus, Butters, you saved my life. You can have everything I have, it's all yours, okay? And you're gonna be fine now, fuck, I swear. C'mere, come sit on the bed, shit, you're really – shaking."

On the bed, Butters crawls into Kenny's lap and clings to him, crying, and it's what he wanted, but it's not. It's not Eric with his padded stomach and war drum heartbeat, it's not the thing Eric kept secret just for Butters, that softness that no one else sees. It doesn't count, but Butters holds on tight, anyway, wanting Kenny to save his life, too, and knowing that he would if he could.

"Just let it out, that's good," Kenny says, stroking his hair, still rocking him a little. "You're gonna be okay. I promise. Everything's gonna be better for you now, you'll see."

"I'm sorry," Butters says, sobbing. "I – ah, I ruined your party—"

"It's not a party," Kenny says, and he kisses Butters' forehead. "It's just dinner. And you didn't ruin anything. I'm glad you're here, okay? Tweek, too. It's good, it's the way it's supposed to be."

"Eric – he, what'll he—"

"Hey, no. Fuck him. You've wasted enough years on that asshole. Just let me take care of you now, okay? I want to, just. Don't worry about anything."

Butters wishes that were possible, but he's worried about everything. Kenny's promises about taking care of him – how could Butters possibly pay him back? He's never worked, doesn't have any money, and even his car is titled in Eric's name. He's worried about the lost boys, because he wants to be impressive to them, to convince them that they should stay here in South Park and keep making Kenny feel like this, like he can do anything, solve anything, but he's probably horrified them with this display, that they're probably wishing he would go. He's worried about Eric most of all, alone in that house, everything broken, spilled out around him in pieces. Butters wants to reach down and touch his tattoo, wants to be able to feel the numbers burning against his fingertips like a reminder that he still belongs to Eric, but Kenny is here, and Kenny doesn't know about the tattoo, and Butters doesn't want him to. That secret is still his and Eric's, even if it doesn't mean anything now.

He falls asleep against Kenny's chest, moaning, worn down to a chewed up thing, his stomach still empty. His exhaustion is so dense that he doesn't wake when Kenny tucks him in under the blankets and slips out of the room. When he finally comes to the dark is so disorienting that he doesn't even have the energy to wonder where he is for a few heavy seconds. Then he hears the sounds from beyond the closed bedroom door: people laughing and talking, plates clinking, a soft thrum of bass from the music that's still playing out there. Those people out there, they belong together, and to each other. Wendy will take care of Tweek and see to it that he gets a fair settlement in their divorce. Butters is the one who truly has nothing, and no one. Kenny wants to help him, but he already does so much, and Butters knows he can't afford another dependent. He sits up and turns on the lamp on Kenny's bedside table. There's a cordless phone sitting beside it, upright on its charger. Butters picks it up.

He's surprised that he remembers the number by heart, though he supposes that makes sense, and he dials it without having to pause and think. While it rings he sinks down to the floor, leaning against the side of the bed and pulling his knees to his chest. She answers on the third ring, sounding irritated, probably because it's so late.

"Mommy?" he says, and he didn't mean for it to come out that way, so small and shaky, as if he's calling from the past, ten years old and still waiting in some parking lot for her to come and pick him up. "Ah - it's me, it's Butters." He makes himself keep talking when she stays silent, telling himself it's a good sign that she hasn't already hung up. "I left him," he says, his voice earthquaking a little. "I - I'm not with him anymore, like you and Dad wanted, that's over, and I don't have anyplace to go, I don't - I don't know what to do, and I, I need help, I think I really need some help-"

"I'm sorry," she says. Her voice is not shaking. "I think you have the wrong number. Goodnight."

He doesn't register what's happened until he's been listening to the dial tone for some time. He can't really hear it, has somehow lost his hearing altogether, but he can feel it vibrating against his ear like an alarm clock strapped to a bomb, trying to warn him about the forthcoming explosion, too late.

He's not sure how long he's been sitting there when the door opens quietly behind him, but the phone has tumbled out of his hand, and something is not quite right. There's a sinister smell in the room that makes his shivering intensify.

"Oh, sorry," someone says. He slips into the room and closes the door behind him, the cheerful sound of the others muffled again. "I'm just getting a sweater for - um. Shit, are you okay?"

It's Kyle, the red-haired one, the smaller one, and Butters wants to tell him that yes, he's okay, he's fine, but he must not be, because his pajama bottoms are wet and cold, and that smell is the one that he used to get in trouble for, late at night, when he woke up and his sheets were soaked with it.

"Oh - okay," Kyle says, noticing this, sort of frozen with his hands outstretched. "Um, I'll get Kenny-"

"No, please," Butters says, barely able to make his voice work. "I'm so, ah, I don't know, I'm sorry, I don't know how this happened, I'm sorry, I'll clean it up, I'll clean it up, I promise, they don't have to know, don't tell them, please-"

Kyle should bolt, anyone would, but he nods and squats down in front of Butters, even puts his hand on Butters' knee.

"I don't know - I don't do this anymore," Butters says, so horrified that he can't even cry; all he can do is shiver until his teeth chatter. "I don't know what happened, I just, oh, fuck, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"No, dude, it's okay," Kyle says, whispering and rubbing his knee. "I mean - trust me. I, um. Understand."

"Oh, Jesus, I can't-" Butters looks down at his lap and moans. "I can't do this anymore, I'm too old for this, this can't happen now, it can't."

He closes his eyes and sees his father in the middle of the night, telling him he's grounded, buddy, and that at twelve years old he's practically a man, and do men wet their beds like little boys? No, they certainly do not. Now he really is a man, only maybe he isn't, he doesn't know what he is, a freak, someone even Kenny won't be able to pity, not now, because, oh, the carpet-

"Shh," Kyle says, so Butters must be saying some of this out loud. "Nobody has to know, okay? I'll clean it up, I'll help you. Here, you're about my size. I'll get you some clean clothes okay?"

"I'm sorry," Butters says, crying now, praying that no one else will come into the room. "I'm so sorry, you shouldn't have to-"

"No, I understand, believe me." Kyle sighs and squeezes Butters' knee. "When I was a kid I, um, had this problem, for a long time, too long, and then, um, once. On a plane, when I was - older. It was so fucking humiliating, but it doesn't have to be for you, okay? I won't tell anyone. Here, let me get you some dry clothes."

Butters can barely function, and he's so splintered that it doesn't even seem that odd, helping a stranger peel off his wet clothes. It's a relief, because he can see that Kyle is telling the truth, that he wants to help Butters keep this a secret because he knows how it feels. He brings Butters a washcloth and a towel so he can clean himself, and Kyle doesn't really feel like a stranger at all, Kenny was right. Some part of Butters knows some part of Kyle, even if it's just this sad part of themselves that they both want to keep hidden from the others.

"Thank you," Butters says when his voice works again. He's wearing a pair of Kyle's sweatpants and socks, a clean shirt, and even a pair of Kyle's underwear. None of it feels as unexpected as it should. "Thank you so - so much, oh, Jesus, let me help you."

Kyle is patting at the wet spot on the carpet, and he must have already rubbed soap over it, because that's what it smells like now, soap.

"That's okay, I've got it," Kyle says, touching Butters' shoulder. "And I wouldn't worry about anyone noticing - Kenny's carpet isn't all that clean to begin with. Go wash your hands," he says, and Butters needed that more than anything, the kind of unquestioned instruction Eric gives him when he's falling apart. He nods and goes to the bathroom to do as Kyle said.

The person in the mirror over the sink is barely recognizable. He's lost at least five pounds in the past few days, his skin is pallid and his eyes are so red and sore that blinking hurts. He washes his hands well and blows his nose into a tissue before returning to the bedroom.

"There, good as new," Kyle says when Butters comes around to the side of the bed where he'd been sitting. The carpet looks fine; it's even mostly dried from Kyle's efforts with the towel. Butters sits on the bed and stares down at the socks Kyle loaned him. They have a green argyle pattern, and they feel nice, kind of silky.

"I'm so sorry," Butter says, softly. "You shouldn't have had to do that."

"Dude, I really don't mind," Kyle says. He tosses the towel away and sits beside Butters on the bed. "Seriously. It was actually kind of cathartic. All I ever wanted when this happened to me as a kid was some goddamn sympathy, and my parents wouldn't even let me go back to sleep. They'd make me clean up and 'initiate analysis' so that we could figure out what had set me off while the memories were still fresh."

"Your parents did that to you?" Butters says, leaning closer to him. He glances over his shoulder at the bedroom door, and it's still closed. "Mine would make me wash the sheets myself, right away, in the sink."

"The sink?" Kyle rears back and frowns. "How could you wash sheets in a sink?"

"With my hands. And the detergent would burn real bad." Butters looks down at his hands, feeling that sting under his nail beds when he remembers.

"That's child abuse," Kyle says, looking truly horrified for the first time since he came into this room.

"Yeah," Butters says. "And I just tried to call them. I don't know what I expected. They cut me off six years ago because they found out I'm gay. Only, well, they really cut me off because my dad is bisexual and has these affairs with other guys in town? And if I was gay, well. That meant that they'd messed me up or failed or something, even after they'd put in all that work, and they hate me now, I guess."

He's still looking down at his hands, waiting to lose his head like he did after his mother hung up on him, but it doesn't come. It feels kind of good, saying all that out loud at last. Eric never wanted to hear about it, or maybe Butters just didn't want to talk about it with Eric, who'd had such a sweet and doting mother. Eric was right, though, about one thing. Good riddance. Butters is better off without those assholes. He knew that, for the most part, before he dialed the phone.

"Hey, um," Kyle says, and Butters looks up at him. "I don't think I've ever said this to anyone in my life, but. Can I, like. Hug you?"

"You sure can."

Butters leans into Kyle's arms and hugs him, too, resting his head on Kyle's shoulder. He's done a lot of napping today, but he's still so tired. Crying is hard work. Kyle smells like nutmeg and flour, like Butters' kitchen does after he's been cooking all day. He sighs and wonders if that's really over for good, his afternoons spent cooking for Eric, waiting for him to come home. There's some relief mixed in with his heartache, because he's here now, out in the real world, and it's not as scary as it seemed when he was still hiding inside Eric's house. He can't imagine living without that, though, the afternoons when he didn't feel trapped but cozy, and the way he would quiver with anticipation as Eric crossed the kitchen, coming toward him with that hungry and homesick look that he'd have when his work day was over, just before he lifted Butters up into his arms.

"Kyle?" The door opens, and Stan pokes his head inside. Butters startles and pulls back, not wanting to give yet another person the wrong idea about a friendly hug, but Stan doesn't look mad. He slips into the bedroom and shuts the door behind him.

"Oh - your sweater, sorry," Kyle says, and Butters flushes inside Kyle's clothes, sure that Stan will be able to tell what happened somehow. "I got started talking to Butters and totally forgot."

"That's okay," Stan says. He sits down beside Kyle and reaches across him to offer Butters his hand. "Good to meet you," he says, and they shake. "Looks like you and Kyle, uh. Do you remember each other or something?"

"No, we were just commiserating about having shitty parents," Kyle says. "And shitty childhoods in general. No offense," he says to Butters.

"None taken," Butters says, and he smiles. "So, um, how do you guys like South Park so far?"

"It's weird but good," Stan says. "I mean, it feels good to be here. Everyone we've met has been awesome."

"Except that police chief guy," Kyle says, scowling. Butters laughs and pulls his legs up onto the bed, hugging them against his chest.

"The South Park chief of police?" Butters says. "Eric Cartman?"

"Yeah, what an asshole," Kyle says, and Stan's eyes widen.

"Kyle," he mutters, elbowing him.

"Wha- oh!" Kyle turns back to Butters, cringing. "Sorry, he's your - uh, I forgot."

"That's okay," Butters says. "He is kind of an asshole sometimes. We fought - we're fighting - I don't know. Kenny thinks it's the best thing ever, but he doesn't know what it's like. Relationships, um. They're complicated."

"Oh, Kenny knows about complicated things," Stan says. "He's out there waiting for his girlfriend to finish breaking up with her husband, and his sister is freaking out because Wendy's husband is having an affair with the supposed father of her baby."

"Shit," Kyle says, wincing. "I guess their blackmail thing is off, then."

"Hang on, huh?" Butters sits up on his knees. "Craig is - the father of Karen's baby is _Craig_?" He's overcome by the urge to grab the phone and call Eric, to give him this possibly useful information.

"Not really, but she was blackmailing him about Tweek," Kyle says, whispering. "Don't tell Kenny, but the real father is someone else, this drifter who me and Stan think sounds kind of dangerous, but I promised Karen that I wouldn't-"

The bedroom door opens and they all jump, turning to see Kenny coming in. Kyle looks kind of panicked, but Butters turns back to give a tiny shake of his head. Of course he won't tell Kenny that secret if Kyle asks him not to. Kyle is keeping Butters' secret for him, after all.

"So the party's moved in here?" Kenny says. He closes the door and walks to the bed, flopping down onto it with a groan. "Wendy's gonna head home. Tweek is staying here, apparently. He's afraid Craig will kill him if Cartman tells him that Tweek was, uh, fooling around on him with Butters."

"We weren't, though, honest!" Butters says, his heart pounding at the thought of Craig's wrath, which is far more terrifying than Eric's.

"Hey, I believe you," Kenny says. "But will Craig? I think Tweek's got a point. He's safer here. I wish Wendy would stay, too, but she says she can handle Craig if she has to, and anyway, she's not the one he's gonna be mad at. If he was pissed at her for being married to Tweek he would have done something by now."

"Jesus, this is making me dizzy," Kyle says. He stands and pats Butters' knee. "I'm going to get you something to eat," he says. "Your stomach's growling. Anyone else want something?"

"No, thanks," Stan says.

"I'm stuffed," Kenny says, folding his arms behind his head. He's got his eyes closed like he's going to go to sleep right here. Butters wouldn't mind that, an old fashioned slumber party. He doesn't want to sleep alone tonight, and his heart aches a little when he thinks of Clyde Frog, but he's glad that he didn't try to bring him along when he left. Eric should have him tonight. He'll need him more.

"Kenny?" Wendy says, slipping around Kyle when he leaves the room to get Butters some food. "Hey, I'm gonna go." Tweek is at her side, and he looks okay, though still a little fragile. He's holding on to her arm.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay?" Kenny asks, sitting up.

"No, I've got a meeting with our distributor tomorrow and I want to sleep in my own bed. Thanks, though." She slides out of Tweek's grip and walks over to sit beside Butters. "Are you okay?" she asks.

"Yeah," Butters says, and it's true, somehow, at least for now. "I'm feeling much better."

"Alright, sweetheart," Wendy says, and she hugs him. "You're welcome to come home with me if you need some space. We've got two spare bedrooms."

"That's okay, I don't really want any space right now," Butters says, and she laughs, pulling back to pinch his cheeks. "Thanks, though."

"You gonna be alright here with these guys?" Wendy asks when she walks back to Tweek, who's lingering in the doorway, looking tired. He nods and she hugs him, petting his hair while he holds on tight, his eyes squeezed shut. "I love you, okay?" she says, softly. "You can come home whenever you want. It's your house, too."

That pings at Butters and he has to turn away. _Like__hell__it__is_. But Eric didn't mean that, even if it's true in some cold legal fashion. The reason Eric turned into a monster at the sight of Tweek and Butters on the couch together is precisely because that house belongs to both of them, and because that's their sacred place, and Eric thinks Butters desecrated it. He actually thinks Butters would do that.

"Love you, too," Tweek says, his voice muffled in Wendy's hair. Butters glances at Kenny, but he doesn't seem jealous, just sleepy. "And I think I'll be safer here. Gah, if Craig, if he tries to -"

"I'll gladly dismember him with my bare hands if he tries to come near my house," Wendy says, almost sweetly, and Stan snorts. Tweek laughs a little, but he still seems worried, though maybe he's more worried for Craig. Butters is pretty sure Wendy could take him. She certainly handed Eric his ass when she was called upon to do so.

Kenny walks Wendy out to her car, and Kyle returns to the room with a bowl of chicken and dumplings for Butters, plus two homemade twisty rolls and a glass of milk. He's a pretty good cook, Butters must admit, but the stock has a little too much celery salt in it. Kyle offers some to Tweek, too, but Tweek says he just wants to rest, and he curls up at Butters' side to do so, his arms tucked between his folded knees. Butters is propped against Kenny's pillows while he eats, having a hard time believing that he had some kind of regressive breakdown in this room just an hour earlier. He's smiling easily while Kyle and Stan give him the details of Kenny and Wendy's budding romance. Butters has only heard Kenny's version up until now. He's got his arm around Tweek and the soup bowl in his lap, and even Tweek laughs a little when Kyle tells them that Kenny refrains from opening beers with his teeth while Wendy is over.

"You don't mind us talking about this?" Stan says, giving Tweek a queasy look. "I mean, she's your wife-"

"We were never really, ah, romantic," Tweek says "I mean, I guess we tried to be, like, back when we were kids, but it didn't really take. She's like my sister or something. She's the only family I've got." He scoots a little closer to Butters as he says so, and it occurs to Butters that Tweek might be getting the wrong idea about him. He stops stroking his fingers through Tweek's hair, hoping he's not giving out romantic signals. Tweek is probably just missing Wendy - and Craig.

"We're you're family, too," Butters says. "I mean, not to speak for you fellas," he says to Stan and Kyle. "But I sorta feel like-"

"We feel that way, too," Kyle says. "It's so strange, and I tried to resist it at first, but I never feel comfortable with people like this, not right away. It's uncanny."

"You guys seriously lost your memories?" Tweek says, chewing on the end of his thumb. "You just woke up one day and it was all gone? Gah! That would be, Jesus, so terrible."

"Yeah, it was," Stan says. He glances at Kyle. "But I think we're getting closer to figuring out why."

"Oh, right," Kyle says, and he snorts. "Now that we've got a ghost in the mix, everything's so much clearer."

"A ghost?" Butters says, and Tweek presses closer to him. They hear the apartment's front door open and shut, and Butters laughs when everyone else startles a little.

"I guess Karen went to sleep," Kenny says when he comes to the door of the bedroom. He pauses there for a moment and grins. "And I guess you guys are stealing my bed as a group now? Not just as a duo?"

"I can sleep on the floor," Butters says, though he's afraid he'll have nightmares if it does, because that's what his parents used to make him do after he'd wet his bed, while the sheets he'd washed were in the dryer.

"No, forget it," Kenny says. "Let's all stay in here. Like old times. Not that you guys remember. I'm gonna get some cookies, anyone else want some?"

"Me, please," Butters says. "Oh - Kenny - you don't have to," he says when Kenny comes over to take his empty bowl.

"Jesus, Butters, sit down," Kenny says. "All you ever do is take care of everyone else. Let somebody return the favor once in awhile, alright?"

Butters sits, embarrassed, and Kenny comes back with a big tupperware container full of cookies. Everyone but Kyle takes some, and Kyle eyes them enviously.

"Don't you want one?" Butters asks, holding one out for him, but Kyle shakes his head.

"I wish I could," he says. "But I've been kind of risky about my diet lately. I've got to watch my sugar."

"'Cause of your diabetes?" Tweek says, chewing. Kyle nods, then frowns.

"How'd you know I'm diabetic?" he asks.

"Shit!" Tweek says, sitting up. "I don't know. I just - said it - I - I don't know, oh, fuck, did I really have my memory wiped? Jesus Christ, how could that happen?"

"We're trying to figure it out," Kenny says, reaching over to put his hand on Tweek's ankle. This seems to calm him somewhat. Kenny explains about the research they've been doing, this friend of Kyle's who led them here and also seemingly died here under mysterious circumstances when he was eight years old. Butters half listens, getting too sleepy to follow the complex chains of reasoning. He leans back against the pillows and thinks about Eric, wondering what he's doing right now. This is exactly where Eric didn't want Butters to be: with Kenny and the lost boys, with Tweek, cozy in someone else's domain. It's not that Butters wants to be back where he was instead of here, but he wishes Eric could be here with him.

As Butters drifts off to sleep alongside Tweek, the others still whispering to each other about their theories, he knows his fears about having nothing in his life without Eric were unfounded. He fits here, and his friends aren't going to turn him away. It's Eric who's alone now, without him, and maybe that should make Butters feel better, like he won something that Eric lost, but it just makes him sad, and lonely, even while he's surrounded by all these other people who care about him. Maybe the way Eric cares about him is flawed. Yeah, it definitely is. He still cares about Butters more than anyone else ever has, enough to tear that whole house apart with his bare hands at the thought of Butters taking shelter somewhere else, and Butters wouldn't be surprised to see it ruins by the morning.


	17. Chapter 17

Stan wakes up to the bright white of snow falling past the window of Kenny's bedroom. Butters and Tweek have vacated the bed, as usual, and Kenny must be at work by now. Kyle typically gets up early, too, to start breakfast or begin assigning errands to the members of their makeshift household who actually leave the apartment, but today he's still curled up against Stan's chest, overly warm and a little clammy when Stan feels his forehead.

"Hey," Stan says, softly, threading his fingers through Kyle's damp curls. "You okay? Still feeling sick?"

"I'm not sick," Kyle says, but Stan can hear it in his voice. He's tired and scratchy, limp in Stan's arms. "I'm fine."

"Kyle, you're burning up. I should take your temperature, you might have a fever."

"It's not a fever. We're sleeping in a bed with two other people. It's just too much body heat."

Stan kisses Kyle's forehead, still amazed that he's willing to let Tweek and Butters share this bed with them. They're small and don't take up much room, but Tweek tosses and turns a lot and Butters makes sad little noises in his sleep that cause Stan and Kyle to wake like concerned parents. Kenny has been sleeping out on the couch, and Karen has offered the floor of her room, but Butters and Tweek don't seem interested, and Kyle has yet to evict them. Stan doesn't mind having them near, because he feels an odd sense of protectiveness toward them, too, but he does miss sex. He rubs his morning wood against Kyle's leg hopefully.

"Hey," Stan whispers when Kyle seems to have sunk back into something resembling sleep. "We're alone. I could lock the door. We could be quiet."

"I'm too tired," Kyle says. "Just let me sleep for another hour."

"In another hour it'll be noon," Stan says.

"Jesus, is it that late already?" Kyle lifts his head a bit, then moans and lets it drop down again, resting on Stan's bicep. Stan strokes Kyle's hair, trying not to seem overly concerned. He doesn't want to pressure Kyle to leave the apartment if he's not comfortable doing so, but he's definitely coming down with something, and the blizzard is beginning outside. Stan doesn't want to be trapped here if Kyle should need real medical attention.

"How about a shower?" Stan says. "Would that make you feel better?"

"Maybe - yeah," Kyle says. He nuzzles his face against Stan's neck, breathing him in. "That sounds good."

It's been two days since Butters arrived, and they've made little progress on their investigation into Christophe's past. Stan has been distracted by Kyle's deteriorating health, and Kenny is so moony over Wendy that he seems to barely remember that they still haven't solved the mystery of how Stan and Kyle can fit here so easily and still not be remembered by anyone but him. Butters is in his own world, trying to put on a cheerful face but obviously in mourning for his previous living situation, though he doesn't leave the apartment, either, and hasn't heard from or tried to contact that police chief guy. Tweek just trembles all the time and drinks a lot of coffee.

"Do you still think we shouldn't tell Kenny about Karen?" Stan asks when he's in the shower with Kyle, holding him while the hot water beats against them. "About Craig not really being the father?"

"I think it will be important once the baby comes," Kyle says, mumbling this against Stan's wet shoulder. "But for now, what difference does it make? Neither of them are exactly hanging around."

"Where does she say this guy is, anyway?"

"I haven't asked," Kyle says. "I don't want her to feel insecure about the whole thing, you know? She was determined to act like she believes that everything will work out great, but she can't be that naive. She just needs to be positive about things until the baby comes. In a couple of months she'll have to face reality in a big way, but I don't want to put that on her until it's absolutely necessary."

"Wow," Stan says.

"What?"

"Nothing, just. That was a pretty impressive analysis, doctor." He kisses Kyle's cheeks when Kyle tips his head back to frown at him.

"Fine, make fun of me," Kyle says. "I do care about these people, though."

"No, I know - I wasn't making fun! I was being serious. Do you ever think maybe you could give the field of analysis a good name? You're pretty insightful, and, you know. I've just been watching the way you take care of all these people, like how good you are at managing all these different personalities."

"You're trying to tell me I should become a therapist?" Kyle says. He's incredulous, but smiling now. Stan shrugs.

"I just think you'd be good at it. And speaking of therapists, have you heard from your parents?"

"My mother has called. I should call her. I'm just tired of trying to explain what we're doing here. I mean, Stan, I don't even know what we're doing here anymore. My parents aren't giving me money, you're probably going to lose your job, and Kenny can't afford to take care of all of us. What's going on? Like, what's the plan?"

"The plan?" Stan raises his eyebrows, surprised that Kyle is comfortable talking about this. Stan has been avoiding the subject, telling himself that it's for Kyle's sake, but lately Stan has been the one who is afraid to think about the future. "I don't know, dude. I keep catching myself feeling like we're waiting for something to happen."

"Well, that's sort of terrible!" Kyle says. "What's going to happen? Me and Wendy were talking last night while you guys played video games. She says she has a bad feeling."

"A bad feeling?" Stan is a little annoyed with Wendy for telling Kyle so, but Kyle doesn't seem scared, just agitated.

"I think we all have it," Kyle says. "Dread. Butters is having nightmares."

"Butters has emotional problems," Stan says. "His dreams aren't necessarily prophetic. And what would you want me to do if they were? Christophe Pillet lived in South Park and died when he was eight. That means he can't be your Christophe, unless that death was staged, too. Why the hell would someone stage the death of an eight year old, though? How am I supposed to do research on that?"

"It's the nature of the death," Kyle says, putting his palms over his eyes. "Attacked by dogs? And they could never locate the dogs who did it or explain how Christophe ended up in a field twenty miles from his house on a school day? It's like what happened to us, Stan! He was - relocated somehow, and no one could remember how he got there."

"Yeah, but they remembered that he existed," Stan says. "There was a funeral, and his parents left town after he died. They must have identified the body. It's not the same Christophe, Kyle, it can't be."

"Then why do I feel like it was him, like he was another one of these South Park people who instantly make me feel comfortable? He was afraid of dogs, Stan! Even poodles made him nervous, and this was a guy who wasn't afraid of anything. And he had these scars on his shoulder, I never asked about them because I thought it was from some abuse he suffered before he was adopted, but-"

"So what are you saying, Kyle?" Stan asks. He doesn't want to fight, but they're both raising their voices, letting them echo off the walls of the shower. "You're saying that Christophe died here when he was eight and rose from the dead to come to London and find you?"

"Maybe he didn't actually die! Maybe they only thought they did, like, there was some mistake in the record keeping-"

"I think his parents would have made pretty sure that he was actually dead before they picked up and moved to Canada."

"Maybe they were lied to!" Kyle is becoming hysterical, and Stan feels bad, because Kyle can hardly be blamed for getting overwhelmed by what they've learned since they came here. He puts his hands on Kyle's shoulders and rubs them, pressing his lips to Kyle's forehead. Kyle calms a little, but he's still breathing hard.

"I get what you're saying," Stan says, though he doesn't really. "But let's say that Christophe somehow was your Christophe. Where does that leave us? He's gone, Kyle, and the only clue he left us was in that letter. He got us to Kenny, and that's important, but if you're asking me what we need to do now that we're here, I'm telling you I have no idea."

"I know, I'm sorry - oh, Stan." Kyle moans and leans up onto his tiptoes, throwing his arms around Stan's neck. "What if the world really is ending? Christophe's letter had that sort of gravity, and I can't stop thinking about it. What if you and I only had this short time together, a few confused months, what if this is all we get?"

"Nothing's taking you away from me," Stan says. He rocks Kyle under the water, closing his eyes against Kyle's wet hair. "Not even the end of the world."

"That's easy for you to say. I don't believe in an afterlife. And even if I did, oh, God, I can count the number of times we've had sex on one hand! I take it back, I'm not too tired, let's do it now, oh, fuck, every time we do it could be our last chance-"

"Shh, stop," Stan says. "Just stop." He pulls back to kiss Kyle's face, stroking his thumbs over Kyle's temples. "We're letting each other get worked up. Neither of us has been sleeping well, you're coming down with something, and there's just - there's a lot going on. You want me to give you a plan? I'll tell you what our plan is."

"Tell me," Kyle says, nodding. He takes Stan's hands from his face and presses them together between his, kissing his knuckles. "Please, tell me."

"You're going to make a big, huge grocery list," Stan says. "Dr. Harper hasn't fired me yet, and I still have money in my account. Wendy brought Tweek's car over last night - I'll use it to go shopping. We'll stock up so we can make lots of comfort food during the blizzard. Does that sound like an okay plan for now?"

"Yeah," Kyle says. His smile comes slowly, but it's real, and bright, despite his bleary eyes. "That's a very good plan. Good thinking." He kisses Stan's mouth, and Stan starts to get hard again as Kyle's tongue slips out to tease against his. Stan has faith that there is an afterlife, and he knows it will be real for Kyle, too, whether he believes in it or not. Still, Kyle has a point. If the world ends before they can spend their lives touching each other like this, Stan will feel cheated.

"I'm gonna get you some cough medicine, too," Stan says. "And some aspirin, and tissues. You're definitely coming down with something."

"I'm not," Kyle says, sniffling. "It's just the change in weather."

"Don't argue with me, Kyle, I'm a medical professional."

"Oh, God!" Kyle pinches Stan's ass and grins. "Story of my life."

They don't have sex, because Kyle insists that shower sex is always awful, no matter how much two people want each other, and when they return to the bedroom with towels wrapped around their waists, Butters is there, asking them what they'd like for lunch. Kyle shoos him out so they can dress, but the mood is pretty much killed. Stan doesn't really mind; he needs to get on the road soon if he wants to stock up on groceries before the blizzard makes the streets impassable.

"I just hope we won't lose power," Kyle says when he's sitting on the bed composing the grocery list, wearing an old flannel robe that belongs to Kenny.

"I'll get some things we can eat without needing power," Stan says. "Granola bars and stuff."

"Oh, Christ," Kyle says, muttering, his pencil hop-scotching over his list as he reviews it. "If we're stuck in here for a week with all these people and only granola bars for sustenance, I'm going to need something stronger than Coors Light."

"I'll get you some brandy," Stan says. "We can stash it in here if it'll be, like, a problem for Kenny."

"I can't imagine him as a drug addict," Kyle says. "He's so peppy and chipper all the time. It's kind of annoying, really."

"I like it," Stan says. "And I think it's just 'cause of Wendy."

"I suppose." Kyle gives Stan a look. "She's very pretty."

"Yeah, and they're good together," Stan says. He can tell Wendy feels the same way around Kenny. Her husband is hiding from the guy he was having an affair with, who might want to kill him, but all Kenny has to do is grin at Wendy and she floats two feet above the ground, oblivious to the insanity around her. Stan knows the feeling, though he's having a hard time shaking his concerns about Kyle's health, even when he's able to hold Kyle close enough to forget everything else.

"Be careful," Kyle says as he passes the list to Stan. "God, I - I should come with you, to help, it's just - when stores are crowded, when people get hectic like that, like, before a storm-"

"No, you stay here, it's fine," Stan says. He rubs his hand through Kyle's wet hair. "I'll be careful, and I won't be long." Stan is actually looking forward to being by himself for a few hours, though if he's honest, he would like to bring Kyle with him so that they could be alone together, away from the others. He knows the snow and the frenzied grocery store would stress Kyle out, plus there's this developing illness that Stan doesn't want to expose to the elements. He kisses Kyle's nose and leaves him sitting on the bed in Kenny's robe.

"I'm going to the store," he says when he pokes his head into Karen's room, where Butters and Tweek are trying to help her set up a baby crib that Kenny brought home yesterday. "Are you guys sure you don't want to wait until Kenny gets back?" he asks.

"I need to be able to do this kind of stuff myself," Karen says, looking a little crazed. "I can't depend on Kenny for everything! Anyway, there are instructions, and I've got help."

Butters smiles up at Stan, and Tweek gives him a queasy look, tugging at the collar of his sweater. Stan salutes them and ducks back out, wondering what sort of abstract sculpture those three will have made of the baby crib parts by the time he gets back.

Tweek's car has been equipped with snow tires, courtesy of Kenny, but it's still a little dicey on the roads, the snow coming down hard and visibility pretty fucked. Stan wouldn't risk the drive at night, and he's glad that he's got plenty of daylight left for this shopping trip, even if the sun is buried behind mile-thick clouds. He doesn't realize until he's pulling into the grocery store's parking lot that he had no directions, that he just drove here as if on instinct. He sits in the car for awhile, thinking about this, then just sighs and gets out.

Kyle would have launched into a panic attack as soon as he saw the state of the store: it makes the airport on a holiday look calm, shoppers hurrying through the aisles with overstuffed carts, crashing and barking at each other, a baby crying somewhere and Christmas music blaring overhead. Despite the crush, the shelves are still pretty well-stocked, and Stan gets down to it, consulting Kyle's list between each selection. His heart is beating fast, from the stress of the drive and the excitement of the atmosphere, and from the chance that he could see Sharon Marsh here. He's thought of her often over the past few days, though he still has no idea what he would say to her if he saw her again. He almost feels as if he doesn't need to, as if he's different just for knowing that she's here, only a ten minute drive from Kenny's apartment, and that she knows he's here, that he exists. That matters somehow, like a protective charm that's been cast.

It takes him almost an hour to finish gathering everything from Kyle's list, and by the time he's headed to the checkout, the store has gotten even more crowded. He parks his cart in a long line that extends back toward the freezer section and listens to the citizens of South Park chatter about the oncoming storm. It's the first time in a week or so that his dread about whatever's coming feels more like childish excitement, because all of these people will be here with him whenever that thing arrives, so how bad could it really be? He wonders how many more of them they could fit into Kenny's little apartment.

"Hey, Stan?"

Stan's heart jerks when he hears his name among these people who shouldn't but must know him, and he calms a little when he sees that it's someone he's actually introduced himself to as an adult, a week back at the police station. It's the deputy, and Stan met him so briefly that he shouldn't remember either of his names, but he remembers both: Clyde Donovan.

"Stocking up?" Clyde says, grinning and nodding to Stan's cart. Clyde is wearing a big coat over his uniform, carrying a cup of coffee, and his cheeks are pink as if he's recently been out in the cold. Stan liked him that day, at the station; Clyde had been on their side about fingerprinting the trophy, though cautiously, obviously afraid of angering his boss.

"Yeah, just getting ready for the storm," Stan says. "You?"

"On duty," Clyde says. "Cartman wanted me here to break up riots."

"Have you seen any yet?"

"No, but there was a close call over a roll of cookie dough. Hey, um, do you have a second? To talk? Maybe after you check out?"

"I guess so," Stan says. "I'd kinda like to get back before the roads get any worse."

"It'll only take a second," Clyde says. "I'm stationed out by the door, you'll see me." He glances around at the others in line who are obviously eavesdropping, and Stan can see why he doesn't want to talk here.

"Alright," Stan says. "I'll see you out there in a sec."

The groceries cost him over two hundred dollars, but it's a good feeling, bringing food home for the others, and the secret brandy for Kyle, which Stan has the bag boy wrap separately. He's almost forgotten Clyde by the time he pushes his cart out in the cold, but Clyde was obviously watching for him, leaning against the front windows. He smiles at Stan and waves him over.

"You should stand inside," Stan says. "You must be freezing."

"I'm okay," Clyde says with a shrug, his breath puffing out into the air. "I've got hot coffee." He lifts his cup and gives it a shake.

"So what'd you want to talk to me about?" Stan asks, ready to get out of here. It's barely two o'clock, but he can already feel the light wanting to fade from the sky.

"It's more like something I wanted to ask you," Clyde says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and lifts his shoulders. "Um, is Butters Stotch staying with you?"

Stan starts to answer, then wonders if he should. Clyde must be asking on behalf of his boss, that police chief - Cartman - and Stan hasn't been able to get a read on whether or not the guy is abusive. Butters certainly seemed to be fleeing something dramatic, but he doesn't have any visible injuries.

"Alright," Clyde says, nodding to himself, so Stan's hesitation must be answer enough. "That's good, I mean - I just wanted to make sure he was safe."

"He's safe," Stan says. "A little, um, fragile, I think. But he's fine."

"Do you think you could maybe ask him to call Cartman?" Clyde looks embarrassed but determined, his eyebrows arching. "I don't know what's going on, Cartman doesn't tell us shit, but he's been a fucking bastard at work for the past few days, and just. It would really make our lives a lot easier, at the station, if they could, um, work this out."

"I don't know what to tell you," Stan says. "I mean, it sucks that your boss is in a bad mood, but maybe Butters needed to get away from him. Kenny thinks so, anyway."

"Kenny." Clyde rolls his eyes. "Look, I know - I guess you're friends with him, but Kenny doesn't know everything. And I know Cartman was a shithead when you guys came to the station that day, but it was only because Kenny was with you. Kenny and Butters were friends in high school, and Cartman has been paranoid that Kenny is going to steal Butters away from him for like, ten years, or however long they've been together. If he finds out that Butters is staying with Kenny, he's gonna go ballistic. Like, epic level ballistic, and we can't handle that right now, not with the storm coming and all the shit we have to get done around town. All's I'm saying is, if Butters misses Cartman at all, he should call him. He doesn't have to go back there, I guess they fought or whatever, but it would do a lot of good if Cartman just heard from him and knew he was okay. I think."

"Maybe Cartman should just move on," Stan says. Clyde scoffs.

"You're not from here," he says.

"Yeah, I am," Stan says without meaning to. "I mean - Kenny says-"

"Oh, right, Kenny says. Hey, maybe Kenny is right about this, maybe you are from here and the rest of us just don't remember, but if you were from South Park, you'd know. Our childhoods were kind of - intense. We all married our high school sweethearts. In most cases, it didn't work out too great, granted." Clyde looks down at his boots. "But Cartman and Butters - they're not gonna move on. Or, shit, I don't know about Butters, but Cartman, ah. He misses him. A lot. He'd never say it out loud, but he's a fucking wreck without him. He's not even eating. We put a big box of Krispy Kreme in the break room yesterday and Cartman walked right past it. That - that doesn't happen, Stan!"

"Dude," Stan says, holding up his hands. "I gotta go. I'll tell Butters to call, but I'm not promising anything."

"Sorry," Clyde says, wincing and rubbing a hand over his face. "I don't mean to lay all this on you. I must sound crazy. It's just been a long couple of days."

"I know what you mean," Stan says. He pats Clyde's shoulder, wondering if he's being too familiar. Clyde smiles.

"You guys stay safe," he says. "This storm's gonna be a bad one."

"I'm counting on it," Stan says. "But we will. See ya."

Stan loads up the car, trying to figure out why he's suddenly in a good mood. It's something to do with being appealed to like that. He's been envying Kyle a little bit, for how well he modulates everybody's moods at the apartment, pushing bowls of soup into their hands and gently enlisting them to take the sheets down to the laundry room or help him remake the bed. Stan wants to be helpful, too. He likes the idea of smoothing things over a little for Butters, even if he knows that Kenny would rail against the idea.

The drive back to the apartment is slow going, the roads clogged with people hurrying to get home before dark, their windshields obscured by the heavy snow fall. Stan is anxious to get back, not comfortable being away from Kyle for this long, and he's getting hungry, too, thinking longingly of the junk food in the bags that are loaded into the trunk and backseat. When he gets back to Kenny's apartment building he finds that he's relieved to see it still standing, which probably isn't a good sign. He gathers up as many of the grocery bags as he can and hurries them up to the second floor. Before he can set them down and fumble for the key Kenny has loaned him, Kyle opens the door, and they smile shyly when they see each other's nervous expressions.

"I was starting to worry," Kyle says. He takes some bags from Stan and kisses his cold cheeks.

"Sorry I took so long," Stan is oddly turned on by his anxiety, now that the worst of it has been settled by the sight of Kyle. "The store was crazy, and it's been awhile since I drove in snow that heavy." They set the bags down in the kitchen, the apartment door still open and half the groceries still down in the unlocked car, and the only thing that seems urgent is kissing desperately, which happens as if it's been prearranged, Stan pressing Kyle up against the refrigerator when Kyle opens for his tongue.

"Oh, Jesus, sorry," Stan says. Kyle laughs, and something about his giddiness makes Stan remember his elevated temperature. He checks Kyle's forehead with the back of his hand. "You're still warm."

"I'm fine. Is there more? I could send Butters out for it."

"No, I'll get it. Are they still building that crib?"

"Building is one word for it. A charitable one."

"Ha, yeah, I thought so. Well, they sound like they're having fun." He can hear Butters and Karen laughing, and Tweek talking at his usual locomotive pace. "Be right back," Stan says, and he only allows himself to kiss the very tip of Kyle's nose before sliding away from him.

Stan tries to help Kyle put the groceries away once he's brought them all inside, but Kyle won't let him, insisting that he's done enough by braving the roads and the chaos at the store. Stan goes into the bedroom to stash the brandy under the bed and change into warmer socks. He gets a couple of coffee mugs and pours some brandy for himself and Kyle, who smiles when Stan presents it to him.

"It's a little early for drinking," Kyle says, still putting away the non-refrigerated items.

"Four o'clock is close enough on a snow day," Stan says.

"God, four o'clock? Where has the day gone?"

"I don't know, I actually feel pretty accomplished. Hey, guess who I ran into at the grocery store?"

"I'm afraid to ask," Kyle says, and he drinks from his mug.

"The Clyde guy from the police station," Stan says. "The deputy. He asked about Butters."

"Oh, God! You didn't tell him he was here, did you?"

"Well, no, but. He guessed."

"Stan!"

"What?" Stan checks the hallway, but Butters and the others are still in Karen's room, and they sound like they're fully occupied, pieces of the crib clonking together like toy blocks. "Maybe Cartman's not so bad," Stan says, whispering. "Clyde says he's really broken up."

"Oh, I'm sure!" Kyle drinks again, flustered by this for some reason. "He misses having his little slave around. Stan, what if he shows up here? He seems like the kind of person who could easily become - unhinged."

"I don't think the local police chief is the crisis we've been fearing," Stan says. "And if he shows up, well, it's five against one. Six if we include Karen."

"Right, let's send a pregnant woman into battle with a lunatic who bears arms."

"Kyle, dude, no one's going into battle. I know Kenny thinks this Cartman guy is bad news, and he did seem like a huge dick when we were at the station, but if he was going to show up here he would have done it by now. Apparently he's always been jealous of Kenny."

"Doesn't he know Kenny is straight?" Kyle asks, making a face.

"I guess," Stan says, shrugging. "Maybe he doesn't believe that he is. Whatever, look - the point is-" Stan thinks for a moment, having lost track of the point. "Oh, well, I guess I was going to ask what you think - should I tell Butters to call Cartman? Clyde wanted him to, like, just so Cartman would know he's okay. Apparently donuts are going uneaten."

"Stan, you've lost me," Kyle says, waving a hand through the air. "I'm glad you're out there making friends, but we've got more pressing matters. I did some thinking while you were gone."

"Some thinking?"

"Yes, and, well. Come here, into the bedroom. I need to ask you something."

They bring their mugs with them, and when they stop at the doorway of Karen's room to peek in at the others Stan can't help feeling a little parental, particularly with the three of them all sitting on the floor, building something together.

"There are groceries now if anyone is hungry," Kyle says. "Butters, I had Stan get some of those jumbo marshmallows you were talking about."

"Oh, geez, you didn't have to!" Butters says, beaming, part of the crib's railing resting across his lap. "Thanks, you guys, that was real nice of you."

"I'm making chestnut stuffing and a pork tenderloin for dinner, if that's agreeable with you, Karen," Kyle says.

"Sure," she says. "Sounds good."

"We're all stocked up on coffee as well," Kyle says to Tweek, who is fidgeting.

"Ah - good! Thanks!"

"Alright, carry on," Kyle says, and Stan can't contain his laughter any longer. He swats Kyle's ass as they walk into Kenny's bedroom.

"What?" Kyle says, shutting the door behind them.

"You sound like a maître d'," Stan says. "Or a mom."

"Alright, so I'm living out one of my fantasies," Kyle says. He grins when Stan digs the brandy out from under the bed and pours them both a refill. "I spent my whole life getting shuffled around, everybody else taking care of me, and never doing it the way I wanted them to. It's nice to be the one who's - I don't know. On top of things."

"I like it when you're on top, too," Stan says, though really he prefers to have Kyle on the bottom, just because it's Kyle's obvious preference. Kyle smirks and laughs when Stan nips at his neck. "So what did you want to ask me about?"

"Oh, that," Kyle says. He sighs and sits on the end of the bed. Stan climbs onto it and sits behind him, his legs open around Kyle's, their mugs clicking together when Stan hugs his waist. Kyle still feels overly warm, but he seems to be in better spirits now, more energetic.

"I hope you won't get offended on his behalf," Kyle says. "But do you get the feeling that Kenny is keeping something from us?"

"Like what?" Stan asks, because he hasn't gotten that feeling at all.

"I can't put my finger on it," Kyle says. He sips brandy and settles back against Stan's chest. "But it came to me earlier, when I was wondering if we should say anything to him about this Damien person. I thought it was odd for Karen to feel like she needed to keep that from Kenny, as if he'd be the type to put a stop to it. I guess she needs his financial support, so that's reason enough to not tell him something that will make him angry, and then I wondered if Kenny would be angry with me if he found about this Damien and realized that I'd known about it."

"I don't think he'd be angry," Stan says. "She made you promise not to tell, and it's not hurting anyone, except maybe Craig, but he hasn't let the cat out of the bag even now that everyone knows about him and Tweek. Butters said Craig wanted some sort of low level scandal to give his run for mayor more attention, so they might actually be helping him by letting everyone go on believing he's the father. "

"Right, and whatever Kenny is keeping from us, I'm sure he thinks it won't hurt us," Kyle says. He's got his eyes narrowed, still thinking. "But I really think there's something he's trying to hide, even if it's not malicious. At first I thought it was the whole drug addict past, but he was really open with me about it when I talked about getting sent to rehab when I was a kid. I actually think it might be something to do with Christophe's letter."

"Christophe's letter? You mean – you think he knows how Christophe died?"

"No, no, nothing that direct," Kyle says. "It's - it's something else, it's part of the reason Christophe wanted us to be with him. Not just because he remembers us, because that's not doing any of us much good so far, at least not in terms of figuring this thing out. There's something else. There's another piece of the puzzle, and Kenny has it, and he - well, I hate to put it this way, but I'm afraid he doesn't think he can trust us with it."

"Kyle, he trusts us," Stan says. "He let us sleep in his bed within a few hours of meeting us."

"I don't mean he doesn't trust us not to hurt him," Kyle says. He turns in Stan's arms so that Stan can see his face. "I mean, well. He's got a complex about people not believing him, right? Because nobody believed him about us? I can relate to that. It makes me hold things back sometimes, because I'd rather be dishonest than doubted."

"What would he be hiding, though?" Stan asks. He hopes Kyle isn't holding something back now, and makes a mental note to stop second guessing him when he says he feels fine, though he can't accept that he is while he's presenting with these symptoms.

"I don't know," Kyle says. They hear the apartment's front door, and the friendly boom of Kenny's voice. Kyle sighs. "I'm going to ask him," he says, speaking more softly now. "And if he's reluctant, I'll offer up the information I have on Karen in exchange."

"Kyle," Stan says, not sure about this plan, but suddenly Kenny is throwing open the bedroom door, still wearing his coat, his scarf swinging around his neck when he smiles in at them.

"Hey, good," Kenny says. "I was afraid you might be naked."

"So naturally you threw open the door without knocking," Kyle says.

"Naturally. You guys went shopping?"

"Yeah, I thought we'd better have supplies," Stan says. He thinks of mentioning Clyde, then decides not to, since he knows what Kenny's position on the situation will be.

"Come in for a second," Kyle says. He moves out of Stan's grip and stands, holding his mug with both hands. "I have something to ask you."

"Yeah?" Kenny pulls off his scarf and hangs it on the door knob. "What's up?" He gives Stan a questioning look, and Stan shrugs, because he's still not really sure what Kyle is on about.

"Shut the door, please," Kyle says. In the room across the hall, the crib construction seems to have given way to a conversation about baby names.

"Uh, okay," Kenny says. He walks into the room and shrugs off his coat, pushing the door closed behind him. "Everything okay?"

"Mostly," Stan says.

"Kenny, I don't want you to take this the wrong way," Kyle says, holding one hand up. "But, ah. We've come to a kind of impasse in the investigation, as you know, and I feel like I have to ask you. Is there anything you're not telling us?"

"About what?" Kenny looks at Stan again, frowning now. "You guys know everything I know."

"Do we really?" Kyle says. Stan is starting to get the feeling that Kyle is a little drunk, and he wonders if Kyle has eaten anything all day.

"What do you think I'm not telling you?" Kenny asks, and the irritation in his features morphs into dull hurt. "I mean, like. Where is this coming from?"

"I don't know!" Kyle says. He groans and drinks from his mug. "I just have this nagging feeling. Especially when we talk about the fact that the Christophe who died seems like the same Christophe who I knew. See, there! You get that look on your face!"

"What look?" Kenny asks, backing toward the door, and Stan has to admit that Kenny looks worried, caught.

"It's like you're scared or something," Kyle says. "Like you know something about this that you don't think we could handle."

Stan waits for Kenny to brush Kyle off, to tell him that he's being crazy, or a jerk, or both. Kenny stands there for awhile with his lips slightly parted, his expression somewhere between wounded and guilty.

"Dude, what is it?" Stan says. "What's going on?"

Kenny groans and turns, lifting his fist like he's going to punch the door, but his punch dies in mid-thrust, and he drops his hand to his side. Kyle looks at Stan, his eyes wide, as if he didn't actually expect this theory to yield anything.

"I told myself that this couldn't possibly matter," Kenny says. "And even if it does – I don't know what to do with it. I don't know that it'll make any difference, except that you guys will think I'm insane."

"Kenny!" Kyle says, hurrying to him. He puts his hands on Kenny's shoulders. "We could never think that. The situation is crazy, and none of us understands it entirely, but I think we've all accepted that things that might sound outlandish can be true. We know you, and – God. We love you." He looks to Stan to confirm this, and Stan gets up from the bed.

"It's true, dude," Stan says. "And, in a week? That shouldn't be possible. With Kyle I thought the fact that I'm, um, romantic with him might be why I felt like I'd known him all my life, but it's like that with you, too. Hell, even with Wendy and the others. Even when I was in the fucking supermarket today, I wanted to hug every yokel who slammed their cart into mine. This is where we belong. You were right, and we can't explain it yet, but you were right all along."

"Don't," Kenny says, moving away from them when they're both touching his back. He leans into the corner, still turned away from them, and braces his elbows on the wall. "This isn't the same."

"Kenny, please," Kyle says. "We've all been hanging around here, waiting for some big revelation to drop into our laps. What if we've just been waiting for you to trust us with this, with whatever else you know? Is it that you know something bad happened to us, something we don't remember, and you don't want to hurt us?"

"No," Kenny says, shaking his head. "I don't know what happened to you, I swear to God. You just disappeared."

"So why are you upset?" Stan asks. His heart is pounding now, and the happy laughter from across the hallway is almost jarring in comparison to the tension in this room.

"Because I can't tell you this thing," Kenny says. "I've – fucking tried, once, okay, when we were kids. You didn't believe me, and. You didn't remember."

Stan and Kyle look at each other, and when their eyes meet, goosebumps race down Stan's back. He steps closer to Kyle and reaches for him, touching his hip.

"We didn't remember?" Kyle says, softly.

Kenny groans, and it's small enough to be contained by the walls of the room, but it also sounds like some part of him has been irrevocably punctured, like he's losing oxygen fast. He's curling in on himself, shaking, and Stan isn't sure if they should grab him and hug him or keep back. He half expects Kenny to start transforming into a fucking werewolf or something.

"Kenny," Stan says. "Please, dude. We would never—"

"I've been wanting to tell you," Kenny says, and when he finally turns to them his eyes are wet. "Ever since we found out about this – discrepancy. About Christophe being dead and maybe being alive, too - fuck." He moans, or maybe it's more like a whimper. "You're not going to believe me," he says, and his eyes are hard when he looks up at them again. "But I'm just gonna say it. Because maybe you won't even remember."

"Kenny, please," Kyle says. "You can trust us. You know that."

"Yeah, but." Kenny looks at the window, his tongue moving over his teeth. "But you still won't believe me."

"I'll believe you," Stan says, and it feels like a promise he can make, but when Kenny shoots him a dark, disbelieving look, he's not so sure.

"It's not that I don't trust you," Kenny says. "It's not that I don't want you to try, because I know you'll try, that's the fucking unbearable part. But no one could believe this. I'd never expect them to, not now, and even when we were kids and we still believed in fucking – magic, or whatever, even then I knew it was a long shot. I was just desperate. And I'm desperate now, because, Jesus, I don't know, maybe it could help, but-" He shakes his head, his eyes pinching up. "I don't want to lose you again, I can't, I can't reset again, not now, oh, fuck, I couldn't do this again-"

"Hey, c'mon," Kyle says, and he moves toward Kenny at the same time that Stan does, both of them pulling him into their arms. It's an effortless three-way hug, and Stan feels so connected to both of them, so safe here, hidden from the storm, that he can't imagine Kenny saying anything that he wouldn't automatically believe.

"Um," Kenny says, lifting his head, sniffling. He's not quite crying, still fighting it back. "Just don't say I didn't warn you."

"Tell us," Kyle says. "Please. Now that we've found each other, nothing can break us apart again." He looks at Stan, and Stan smiles, because Kyle believes that now, too.

Kenny takes a deep breath and steps away from them, drawing his hands down along their arms as he does, as if he doesn't want to let them go but needs to. He slumps into the corner by the door and takes a deep breath.

"Christophe could be like me," Kenny says. "That's what I thought when we found out that he'd died."

"Like you how?" Kyle asks. His voice is gentle, and Stan appreciates the fact that Kyle can speak at all, because he's not sure that he could if he tried. There's something big and wet in his throat, not really a sob, just something that he can't seem to swallow.

"Maybe he can't die," Kenny says. His voice is growing steadier, his expression shifting into guarded neutrality. He stands up straighter, and when he sucks in his breath it sound more like a sniff than a sniffle. "Like me. I can't die. Or, no. I shouldn't have put it that way when we were kids. I can die. I have died. But I come back, and no one remembers. Not you guys, not my parents, not Karen, not anybody. I think the only reason I remembered you two is that I was dead when you disappeared, and whatever happened to everybody else didn't happen to me."

Stan feels like he was expecting something worse, though he can't really make himself hear what Kenny just said. Kyle makes a sound of patient exasperation, as if he thinks Kenny is offering this as a bluff before telling them his real secret. Kenny's expression is stony and resigned, like a man awaiting execution.

"You've seen the afterlife, then?" Kyle asks, and Stan can hear from his tone that he doesn't believe Kenny, so Kenny will be able to hear that, too.

"Yes," Kenny says, sharply.

"I – ah." Kyle looks to Stan, as if Stan will know what to do with this.

"Did it hurt?" Stan asks, because he can think of nothing else. Kenny stares at him, and Stan watches his resolve crumble, feeling it in his own chest, like there's a sandcastle there that's just been obliterated by a wave.

"Yeah," Kenny says. "It hurt every time."

There's a dense silence wherein it seems like one or all of them should burst into tears or laughter, but none of them does either. Stan can hear Kenny breathing, and he's not sure that he believes or could ever believe that Kenny has died, but he knows, at the same time, that it hurt. He can hear how true that is in every breath.

"Can you give us some time to process this?" Kyle asks, and Stan is proud of him, because he can hear Kyle's parents in that request, but only in the sense that Kyle wants to help, and that he'll need to think about this more before he can.

"Yeah," Kenny says. "Unless Wendy is right."

"Wendy?" Stan says.

"Unless the world is ending." Kenny sniffs again, or maybe it's more like a sniffle this time. He wipes at one eye, then the other, and stares at the window. "Anyway, I. Kind of need a drink."

"You want something stronger than beer?" Kyle asks, lifting his mug.

"Kyle!" Stan says, and Kenny laughs.

"No," Kenny says. "And that's true, too. Wendy's coming over later, so. I really just want a fucking beer."

"Wait," Kyle says. He grabs Kenny's wrist when he turns for the door. "Don't go out there assuming that we think you're crazy. I might not know what to think yet, but you're – you're sane, and I trust you. I know you wouldn't lie to us."

"So that can only mean one thing," Kenny says, trying to smile. The effort makes the pink around his eyes turn red. "That I really have died, and I have come back, and that's the reason I remember you guys, and maybe why your friend Christophe did, and why no one else can."

"There's something else," Kyle says, dodging that admirably. "Something we haven't told you."

"Oh boy," Kenny says. His laugh actually sounds real, at least partway. He wipes his eyes with his sleeve. "What's that?"

Kyle looks at Stan, who laughs nervously, because he actually has no idea what Kyle is going to say.

"It's about Karen," Kyle says. "I probably should have told you this as soon as she told me, but. Listen. Craig Tucker isn't the father of her baby."

"Huh?" Kenny looks angry for a moment, then just confused. "So. What? Why would she – who's the father, then? You?" Kenny manages a weary smirk, and he pokes Kyle in the ribs. Kyle rolls his eyes.

"No," he says. "It's some guy who's been hanging around South Park for a long time, and he made her promise not to tell anyone about him. She says the whole town has some kind of prejudice about his father, but I get the feeling there's more to it than that. His name is Da-"

The nerve-splitting scream that comes from across the hallway is so straight out of a horror movie that Stan doesn't associate it with real life until he hears Tweek say shit! and an assortment of wooden things crashing together as they're dropped. Kenny bolts before Stan's panic can even register properly, and he follows Kenny across the hallway, throwing a hand back for Kyle, who takes it.

Karen's bedroom is quiet, empty, the half-assembled crib still rocking slightly against the carpet. The only sign that three people were here half a second ago is a spilled cup of coffee and an echoing buzz in the air, like the smell before snow, only this smells like something else entirely.

Sulfur.


	18. Chapter 18

Darkness has fallen behind the backdrop of the relentless snow, like a set change without a curtain. Kyle somehow didn't notice the gray daylight fading during the confrontation with Kenny, and he can't be sure how much time has passed since they began scouring the apartment for any sign of Karen, Tweek and Butters, but as they come together again in the living room, all of them talking at once, there is really only one conclusion they can draw: the impossible, which may very well have been happening in this little town for some time, has happened again. Their friends have vanished into thin air.

"We should search the hallways," Stan says, holding Kyle's elbow, which is helpful, because Kyle feels like he's going to lose his balance at any moment, the room swirling around him as his panic solidifies. He's been sick with a terrible headache all day, and hasn't felt quite right for the past week or so, determined not to let anyone find out, lest he be dragged out of here and into some doctor's office.

"The hallways?" Kenny says. He's hysterical, clutching at his hair as if he's going to start tearing it out in handfuls. "Stan, look at the door. It's fucking bolted! The chain is still latched!"

"I don't know, I don't know!" Stan says, shouting. "Should we call 911 then? What should we do?"

Kyle really thought Stan would be better in a crisis. He would be shouting himself if he hadn't been overtaken with persistent nausea the moment they heard Karen scream. He's afraid that he opens his mouth he'll vomit up that brandy he drank.

"We've got to get out of here," Kenny says, panting his breath. He pulls his keys from the pocket of his jeans and promptly drops them. "I thought it was safe here," he says, bending down to get them and then staying there, on his knees, his hands braced on the carpet. "I thought we'd be safe."

"He's right, we have to go," Stan says. He grabs Kyle by both shoulders and peers at him as if he's about to tell him some mad, horrible secret of his own, that he's been dead and has seen heaven and that it's puffy white clouds after all. "They know where we are now," Stan says.

"Who does?" Kyle manages, the pounding at his temples intensifying when he speaks. He really shouldn't have had brandy.

"Whoever's coming," Stan says. "Or. Whoever just came and went."

"C'mon," Kenny says, and he starts dragging both of them toward the door. Distantly, Kyle's unwillingness to leave this apartment flares in his chest, but it feels too small now to acknowledge.

"Where are we going?" Stan asks. "The storm-"

"We're getting the fuck out of here before the storm gets worse," Kenny says.

"Should we go to Wendy's house?" Kyle asks.

"No!" Kenny says. "I won't bring this to her. We'll go to the police." Abruptly, they're out in the hallway, and Kenny doesn't even have his coat. For that matter, neither does Kyle, but going back for anything seems a bad idea, as if the place is on fire. That sulfur smell; Stan, being Catholic, will think of demons, witchcraft, the devil. Kyle, an atheist who doesn't believe in any of those things, is straining to hear what sounds like low, wicked laughter from a place that feels both very distant and as if it's located somewhere within his own mind. Which can't be a good sign.

The cold outside is bracing, and it actually feels nice to Kyle, as opposed to the unnatural heat that's been boiling under his skin for the past few days. It's the only symptom he can't effectively hide from Stan, who is attendant even now, holding Kyle against him as they walk to Kenny's car. Kyle is completely unwilling to become sickly again, to allow his traitor of a body to transform him back into a thing to be taken care of and tucked into bed by someone healthier, but at the moment his illness is actually a kind of comfort, because it's distracting him from the fact that whatever apocalyptic event they've all been anticipating seems to have begun. He lets Stan shuffle him into the backseat, and is surprised when Stan climbs in beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Kyle clutches at the front of Stan's sweater, similarly unwilling to let go of him now that people have begun vanishing. Whatever is coming for them will have to pry Stan out of Kyle's cold, dead fingers if it means to separate them, which, considering the growing intensity of Kyle's headache, may not be far from happening.

"It's because I told you guys," Kenny says, choking on the words a little, though he's not actually sobbing, just speaking as if someone's hands are already around his throat. "Fuck, this is my fault, it's my fault." The tires squeal and slip over the frozen parking lot as he peels out into the street.

"It's not your fault," Stan says, though he doesn't sound certain of anything at the moment. "Here, put your seat belt on," he says, more quietly, to Kyle.

"It is," Kenny says. "Last time I tried to tell you? That was just a couple of months before you guys disappeared. I don't know why it matters, Jesus, why does it matter? It's not like you believe me."

"Kenny, people are disappearing almost in front of our eyes," Kyle says. "I think we believe something is happening that can't be explained. Although, actually, since the issue is being forced, could you explain? What do you mean by 'dying'"?

"I mean getting shot in the head or run over by a bus," Kenny says. "I mean having a funeral held for me, where my parents show up and sob drunkenly and collect life insurance, and then ask me where the hell I've been when I show up again."

"How do you show up, though?" Stan asks. He holds Kyle more tightly. "Do you fight your way back somehow? And where do you go when you die?"

"Hell, mostly," Kenny says. He looks at them in the rear view mirror and growls with frustration when he sees their expressions. "Never mind. Fuck. Don't tell Wendy I said any of this."

"You've been to hell?" Kyle says. He's still vacillating between wanting to believe that Kenny is being melodramatically metaphorical and fearing that whatever unexplainable phenomenon is actually happening to all of them has driven him out of his mind.

"I said to forget it," Kenny says, trying to look dangerous. "Just please, don't tell Wendy. If you care about me at all, please, don't tell her."

"We won't," Stan says.

"Of course not," Kyle says.

"Oh, shit, shit," Kenny says. "She's supposed to go to the apartment after work - she might be on her way there right now! Jesus-" He gets his phone out of his pocket, and Stan reaches into the front seat to take it from him.

"Let me," he says. "You're upset, and the roads are terrible. I'll call her."

"I don't know what to do," Kenny says, speaking to neither of them, to no one, leaning forward onto the steering wheel and crying a little. "What the hell has it all been for if I don't even know what to do?"

Kyle feels like he should comfort him, but when he surges forward to do so the seat belt Stan has fastened across his chest holds him in place.

"Wendy?" Stan says, speaking into Kenny's phone. "Yeah, it's Stan. No, something's happened. We don't know, but Karen, and Butters, and Tweek - they're gone. Someone took them."

Kyle can hear Wendy's disbelieving exclamation. He looks out the window at the dark road, which is empty except for the beams of light from Kenny's car.

"We don't know," Stan says. "We're going to the police station now. I don't know what we'll tell them, though. The door was bolted from the inside, and - and it was like they'd just been snatched out of thin air. One second they were right across the hall, and the next second they were all gone. I don't know, maybe. It can't be the same, though, because we haven't forgotten them."

"Not yet," Kyle says, his head pressed to Stan's chest. The pound of Stan's heartbeat is easing his headache somewhat, and his panic.

"Where is she?" Kenny asks. "She's not in her car, is she?"

"Kenny wants to know where you are," Stan says. "She's at the office," he tells Kenny.

"Tell her to stay put."

"Kenny says you should stay there," Stan says. "Hmm. Yeah, no, I understand." He moves the phone away from his mouth. "She refuses," he says to Kenny.

"What?"

"She says she'll meet us at the police station," Stan says.

"What, no! Let me talk to her!"

"Kenny wants to - yes, he's driving. Alright. Okay, good, we'll see you there. Drive carefully."

"No!" Kenny says again, his hands squeaking on the steering wheel. "Let me talk to her!"

"She's hung up," Stan says. He hands Kenny's phone to Kyle, who slips it into his pocket. "I know you don't want her driving, but I think-"

"Don't want her driving?" Kenny is hysterical, understandably. "That's not the fucking issue, Stan! Something is stalking us, and she's determined to - to, goddammit, damn her-"

"We'll be safer if we're together," Kyle says. "You were right. Wendy shouldn't be alone."

"Oh, God, Kyle, really?" Kenny says. "My sister was five feet away from me, and she's - she's - what the hell were you going to tell me? About her baby? The father?"

"He's some fellow named Damien," Kyle says. "She told me a week back, and I should have told you, but she made me promise-"

"Damien?" Kenny says, frowning. "What are you talking about? I've never heard that name, she doesn't know anyone called Damien. She told you this?"

"Yeah, she said he was always sort of in hiding," Stan says.

"Stan knows, too?" Kenny says, sputtering.

"I'm sorry, but I tell him everything!" Kyle says. "And I didn't really see how this could hurt, keeping it from you, but maybe it has, oh, God. You've never heard that name, Damien?"

"I-" Kenny narrows his eyes, squeezing the steering wheel. "I don't think so? Damien - Damien. Maybe there's something familiar about it, but, Jesus, why the fuck would she keep that from me?"

"She didn't think you would approve," Kyle says. "She said there was something to do with his father - ah!"

"What?" Stan grabs at Kyle when he tips forward, putting his head against his knees. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, just - my head," Kyle says, seeing red behind his pinched shut eyes, the pounding in his temples replacing the sound of Stan's heartbeat. "I just need, ah. Some aspirin."

"Oh, God, he's sick, I knew it," Stan says, rubbing Kyle's back.

"I'm not," Kyle says, lifting his head with some effort. He turns and clings to Stan, hiding his face against Stan's neck. "It's just so much to - think about."

"Damien," Kenny says again, muttering the name under his breath, frowning. "Damien, Damien. Shit, where have I heard that?"

"I think you should stop saying it!" Stan says, shouting. Confused, Kyle lifts his head a bit to look up at him.

"Stop saying what?" Kenny asks. "The name?"

"When Kyle first said it, that's when the others disappeared!" Stan's face goes red as he makes his observation. Kenny snorts.

"You two aren't making any fucking sense," he says.

"We're in good company there!" Kyle says, and Kenny laughs. He shakes his head.

"I don't know what good going to the police about any of this is going to do," he says. "Cartman will just throw us back out onto the street."

"Doubtful," Stan says. "He's got an interest in this, too, as much as any of us."

"Oh - Butters." Kenny moans sadly. "Butters, Jesus, I keep thinking about Karen, but. Butters, they took Butters-"

"And Tweek," Kyle says, offended on his behalf.

"Cartman will help," Stan says. "He'll drop everything when he hears that Butters got taken."

"Jesus, that's optimistic," Kenny says. "You don't know this guy. He doesn't give a shit about Butters. He's probably already found some other little blond waif to screw."

"You're wrong," Stan says. "Clyde said-"

"Clyde? Cartman probably paid that asshole to get information about where Butters was- oh, Jesus!"

"What?" Kyle asks, clutching at Stan, who clutches back. It's amazingly comforting, to the point of actually reducing Kyle's headache. They could be in audience with Lucifer himself and Kyle would be relatively calm, as long as he could pull Stan against him.

"Cartman!" Kenny says. "He must have found out where Butters was. He took Karen and Tweek just because they were witnesses-"

"What is he, a wizard?" Kyle says, scoffing.

"I don't know, Kyle," Kenny says, glaring at Kyle in the rear view. "This undead zombie kind of believes that maybe he could be, yeah."

"You're not an undead zombie," Stan says.

"Well, I'm something, and maybe Cartman is, too. Jesus Christ, if he hurts my sister-"

"Should we not go to the police station, then?" Kyle asks.

"Well, we have to now," Stan says. "That's where Wendy is going. Unless you want me to call her and tell her to meet us someplace else?"

"No," Kenny says, his teeth grit. "There is no place else. I'm going straight to the fucking source. Cartman is not going to get away with this."

Confused, Kyle buries his face against Stan's neck again. The smell of his skin wraps around Kyle just as firmly as Stan's arms have, and they spend the rest of the car ride holding on to each other desperately, as if they can physically resist being ripped apart again, Kyle's seat belt straining uncomfortably against his neck and Kenny muttering to himself up front, making promises to nobody that Cartman will pay for this.

By the time they reach the police station Kyle is feeling like it might be nice to sleep, to maybe just let Stan carry him through the rest of this trial while he dozes, but he also gets the feeling that if he gives in to sleep he'll wake up elsewhere, far from Stan and probably for good this time, so he's grateful for the cold that shocks him back to wakefulness when they climb out of the car.

"Just let me do the talking," Kenny says, keeping his voice low as the approach the front door of the station, as if there are spies in the snow-covered parking lot.

"That's fine by me," Kyle says, though he usually doesn't like trusting anyone else with that chore. At the moment he's feeling too lightheaded to attempt to explain any of what is going on, most of which he can't even explain to himself.

"Alright, but don't come on too strong right away," Stan says. "Remember that we might need his help. Think of Karen."

Kenny makes no promise to keep himself in check, and Kyle doesn't expect him to heed Stan's warning. When it comes to Kenny, Kyle has an unsettling combination of absolute trust and a complete lack of faith that Kenny will be able to make the right choices when it comes down to it. If anyone is going to save the day it will be Stan, perhaps under Kyle's counsel, but at the moment they're both still clutching at each other like frightened children, following Kenny into the station.

The station is quiet and uncrowded, and Kyle isn't sure why he was expecting it to be bustling with chaotic activity, maybe just because it's the first public place he's ventured into in some time. Kyle has been in police stations before, both American and English, never under anything resembling pleasant circumstances and always while intoxicated to some degree. Anyplace with cells that lock makes him nervous, pet stores included, and he's holding tightly to Stan's hand as Kenny stomps past the front desk and into the back rooms.

"Hey!" someone shouts, and it's that deputy, the one who gossiped with Stan at the supermarket. It makes Kyle dizzy to think that was just earlier today, and that less than an hour has passed since they burst into Karen's bedroom and found it empty.

"Back the fuck off, Clyde," Kenny says when the deputy moves toward him, and, amazingly, Clyde stops in his tracks. Kyle supposes it makes sense, that someone like Cartman would want a deputy who does whatever he's told without really thinking about it. Kenny blows past him and quite literally kicks open the door of Cartman's office, Stan and Kyle at his heels.

Cartman is hunched at his desk, cutting a very different figure than he did the last time they were here. He's feral-looking, sporting the beginnings of an ugly mustache and stubble on his fat cheeks, which actually don't look as fat as Kyle remembered. Cartman shoves something he was holding into a drawer and glowers at them, his face quickly turning a very bright red.

"What the fuck-" he starts to say, but Kenny won't let him finish.

"What have you done with my sister?" Kenny asks, shouting. Kyle turns to see if they've attracted the attention of everyone in the station. Only Clyde and a black-haired teenager who is hanging on the bars of the holding cell are paying attention, and it seems they might actually be the only other people here.

"Your sister?" Cartman says, standing and matching Kenny's furious expression. "What the hell are you talking about? Take your goddamn freak show and get the fuck out of my office!"

"I know you had a part in this," Kenny says, pointing a finger at Cartman, his jaw locked. Stan seems poised to restrain Kenny if he should make a lunge for Cartman, who is about twice the size of Kenny and wearing a gun on his hip.

"A part in what?" Cartman asks. He seems angry but also drowsily caught off guard, as if they just woke him, though he was definitely awake before they came in, and up to something. "Clyde, goddammit, get in here and arrest these hippies for trespassing!"

"Wait," Stan says, holding a hand up in Clyde's direction, though Clyde is still frozen in place outside the door, his eyes wide. Stan turns back to Cartman. "Dude, something's happened," he says. "It involves Butters."

"Like he doesn't know!" Kenny shouts. Cartman ignores him, his eyes locked on Stan.

"Butters?" Cartman says. He's softened just by hearing the name, but Kyle isn't sure that it's not an act. "Wha- he's with Wendy, isn't he? Clyde told me he was with Wendy."

"No, he was with us," Stan says. "And someone took him, Cartman. They took Karen and Tweek, too."

Cartman stares at Stan for a few beats, his fingers twitching. His eyes slide to Kenny, slowly.

"He was with you," Cartman says. "He was with you, and someone. Took him."

"They just disappeared," Kenny says. "Karen, Butters, and Tweek - we were right across the hall, and the front door was latched-"

"I'm gonna fucking kill you, Kenny!" Cartman shouts, his voice rising with every word, and then he's the one who's lunging, growling as he runs toward Kenny. Stan steps between them and Clyde rushes forward to help. Kyle shrinks backward, and he can hear wicked laughter again, but this time it's coming from across the station, from the boy in the holding cell.

"Like you give a shit about him!" Kenny says, fighting against Stan while Clyde does his best to restrain Cartman, both of them slipping across the floor from the effort. "You did this, didn't you? You worked some fucking - spell, as revenge because he left you!"

"That's it, that's fucking it!" Cartman screams, his face purple-red with rage as he tries to get at Kenny. "You are a useless goddamn lunatic and a danger to this town! You're banished, Kenny! And you can take your fucking imaginary friends with you!"

"Cartman, wait, just - wait!" Clyde says, rapidly losing the battle of keeping him away from Kenny. "Butters - they said - something happened to him!"

Cartman stops fighting Clyde for a moment, huffing his breath. He's still kind of growling, his eyes locked on Kenny.

"Where the hell is my fucking Butters?" Cartman asks. "What the fuck have you done with him?"

"Don't play stupid," Kenny says. "As far as I'm concerned, you're responsible for this whole thing. You probably sent Stan and Kyle away, you made everyone forget them-"

"Alright, no, I'm done with that shit." Cartman holds up a hand and turns to Kyle. "You," he says, pointing. "Ginger. Tell me what the fuck happened to Butters before I have to kill everyone in this room."

"Hey," Clyde says, softly, but no one seems to notice.

"What they said is true," Kyle says. "We were all in the apartment, and Butters was just across the hall with Karen and Tweek. Everything was fine, the front door was bolted, and then we heard Karen scream. By the time we got over there - and it was no time at all, only as long as it took to open Kenny's bedroom door - they were all gone. Not a trace of them, no sign of a break in, nothing."

"There was that smell," Stan says, still holding Kenny's shoulders. "Like sulfur."

A door slams open somewhere in the station, and everyone startles, even the eavesdropping boy in the holding cell, who turns to see who's coming in through the front door. It's Wendy, windblown and frantic, her coat hanging open and her purse clutched in her fist. Kenny shoves Stan away and runs to her.

"Dammit, you shouldn't have come," Kenny says, but as soon as he reaches her he grabs her and squeezes her to him like she's just saved his life by arriving. Wendy reciprocates, looking confused, her eyes darting from Stan's to Cartman's to Kyle's as she strokes Kenny's hair. He's got his head on her shoulder and he's taking great, heaving breaths that Kyle can hear from across the room.

"Perfect," Cartman says, still trembling with rage. He's squeezing Clyde's arms like Clyde is a football that he's preparing to pitch through the air. "Another accomplice. Testaburger, you know, I've always dreamed of interrogating you."

"Oh, shut up," Wendy says, frowning at him. "What's happened? Did you find them?"

"We don't even know where to look," Stan says. "It was like something literally sucked them out of the air." He crosses himself after saying so, something Kyle has never seen him do. Perversely, even in the midst of everything, it's arousing. Acknowledging this forces Kyle to realize that he's not feeling especially sick at the moment, or at least not as ill as he felt in the car. This is worrying for reasons he can't pin down.

"Wendy, she's gone," Kenny says, lifting his head. "Karen, my sister, I was right there, she was screaming-"

"Oh, God." Wendy looks truly terrified, bringing her hands up to cover her mouth. "And Tweek? And Butters?"

"Did Butters scream?" Cartman asks, and Clyde makes a choked little sound, like Cartman is squeezing him hard enough to leave bruises now.

"No," Kenny says. "But what difference does it make? They're all gone, and Cartman, I know you know something."

"All I know is that if one fucking hair on his head is out of place when we find him, I'm going to string you up in town square and beat you until you're begging me to kill you," Cartman says, pointing at Kenny.

"Sir," Clyde says. "Um, Cartman? You're hurting me, Chief."

"What?" Cartman barks, giving Clyde a look of hellfire. He looks down at his hands and frowns. "Oh," he says, releasing Clyde and stepping backward, stumbling a bit. "Sorry."

"Were there any clues?" Wendy asks. "Anything left behind?"

"Just this terrible sulfur smell," Kenny says. "Like – like what you'd imagine hell to smell like."

"Now let's not get dramatic," Kyle says, not wanting Kenny to sully their credibility further by claiming to know that smell precisely, from experience. "I've got one clue, and it might be a stale one at this point, but it also might be all we really have to work from." He reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, where he keeps the letter from Christophe. Having it with him has felt like a weak but valid talisman, and he's reluctant to offer it for the eyes of Cartman and the others, but he doesn't want to withhold anything that might help reclaim their friends, however paltry. Cartman snatches the letter out of Kyle's hands, rude and careless, and Kyle glowers at him.

"What's that?" Kenny asks. "The letter your friend sent you?"

"Yes," Kyle says. "He's the reason we're here, and, Cartman, I've got reason to believe that he lived in South Park at some point, though there's a record that he died here when he was eight years old, under somewhat mysterious circumstances. If no one has any better ideas, perhaps we could look into it."

Cartman looks up at Kyle, scowling with disgust. "What are you," he says. "British or something?"

"A little," Kyle says, frowning. "And the friend who sent me that letter was French. Why?"

"Cartman is bigoted about foreigners," the boy in the holding cell calls. He's smiling, seeming to enjoy this whole display a lot.

"Clyde," Cartman says, snarling. "Go gag that Canadian so I can think."

"I don't think we can do that, legally," Clyde says, scratching his fingers though his hair.

"Ike?" Kenny says, still holding Wendy against him. "Jesus, is that you?"

"Hey, Kenny," Ike says, lifting one hand to wave. Maybe he's not actually a teenager, just a burnout in his early twenties who continues to resemble one, especially in his slouching posture, his elbows resting on the bar that crosses perpendicular to the ones that are keeping him confined. "What's up? Something happened to Karen?"

"Yeah, she's – well, we don't know." Kenny turns to Kyle. "That's your brother," he says.

"I'm sorry?" Kyle says.

"Oh, that's right," Wendy says, one hand still hovering near her mouth. "Um, Kyle, well. Ike is the Brovlofskis' adopted son."

"Wait," Ike says. He grins more widely and takes hold of the bars, bouncing a little. "Are these the famous disappearing boys?"

"Everyone shut the fuck up!" Cartman shouts. He walks to Kyle and thrusts the letter into his face, making him jump. "What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?" he asks, shaking it at him. "It's written in some nonsense language."

"It's called French, you imbecile," Kyle says, quickly beginning to loathe this person. Stan has his guard up now, moving closer to Kyle and narrowing his eyes at Cartman.

"You might fingerprint it," Stan says. "To see if it matches the fingerprints of the Christophe Pillet who died here, if you have them on file."

"Here we go again with the fingerprints!" Cartman says, throwing both hands out in exasperation, the letter still clutched in one of them. Kyle wants to snatch it back. "Fingerprints don't prove shit, you assholes. And at this point I don't give a fuck if you have concrete proof that you loony fucks grew up here and we all forgot you, or that some fucking Frenchman knew about the whole thing, or that Kenny has actually been Santa Claus all this time – just tell me where the fuck Butters is right fucking now!"

"How many times to do we have to tell you, idiot?" Kenny says. "We don't know! But wherever he is, Karen is with him, and Tweek, too."

"Oh, God," Wendy says, her eyes falling shut. "He'll be so frightened."

"Goddammit, Kenny!" Cartman says, his face getting red again. "This is probably some drug dealer friend of yours trying to get revenge. Who have you ripped off lately?"

"Kenny doesn't do drugs anymore," Wendy says, giving Cartman a murderous stare. "And you heard them – they were there when it happened and they didn't see anything! The door was bolted from the inside!"

"So who did it then, Wendy?" Cartman asks. "The ghost of some dead Frenchman? What the hell are you people getting at?"

"Craig," Kenny says, and they all turn to him. His eyes are wide, unfocused.

"Craig?" Wendy says. "You think he's behind this?"

"I was just trying to think of who my enemies are," Kenny says. "The people who might want to hurt Karen to get to me. Cartman, naturally, but who else? Craig! Think about it, Wendy! He has a reason to want to hurt all of them – Karen for taking his money, Tweek for allegedly cheating on him, and Butters for being the one he thought Tweek cheated with."

"That son of a bitch!" Cartman says, growling with rage. He turns to his desk, picks up a heavy paperweight and throws it at the wall, where it busts through the plaster, sticking there. "Fucking Craig! I wouldn't guarantee to rig the election for him. He was – so fucking smug, I just couldn't – and now he's got Butters, fuck! Butters." For a moment Cartman actually sounds like he'll weep, but his eyes are steely when he turns back to his audience, teeth bared. Kyle still isn't buying this, not at all. He wouldn't be surprised if Cartman was working with this Craig person, and he's very interested about that thing that Cartman was so quick to conceal in the drawer when they burst in here.

"No, but this doesn't make sense," Wendy says, frowning. "You said it was like they were sucked out of the air – how could Craig do that?"

"He's rich as fuck!" Cartman says. "Maybe he bought some kind of teleport machine! Who the fuck knows? Clyde, go arrest Craig! No, fuck that, I'll go myself."

"Wait, just – wait," Kyle says. "This doesn't feel right."

"Yeah, well, I don't have time to humor the feelings of a British ginger who everybody forgot existed," Cartman says. He grabs his coat from the back of his chair. "Now if you'll excuse me, fags, I have an arrest to make. Clyde, stay here and make sure none of these assholes goes anywhere."

"Won't you need backup?" Clyde asks. Cartman laughs.

"For Craig? Ha, no, thanks, I think I can handle that piece of shit by myself. I'll snap the motherfucker in two if Butters is even slightly uncomfortable when I get there."

"Wait, Cartman," Kenny says. "How do we know we can trust you? How do we know you're not just going to tip Craig off that we're on to him and help him escape?"

"He's got Butters!" Cartman screams, up in Kenny's face. "And I don't really give a fuck if you trust me or not. Clyde, shoot to kill if they try anything."

With that he's off, blustering out the front door, snow swirling inside before the slams the door shut behind him. Kenny groans and puts his hands over his face.

"It still doesn't make sense," he says. "How could Craig get in and out of the apartment and take those three with him?"

"You guys are going to laugh," Stan says, his cheeks turning pink. "But, um. Isn't this that guy who got really rich off something he invented?"

"Yes," Wendy says. "Unblockable pop-up ads."

"Oh, Christ, the person responsible for those is from this town?" Kyle says, blushing when he thinks of all the times he got caught looking at porn because of that particular invention.

"What are you thinking, Stan?" Kenny asks when Stan hesitates. "Say it."

"Yeah," Ike agrees, listening intently from his cell. Kyle gives him a cursory glance, because apparently this person is supposed to be his brother. Ike smiles and Kyle looks away. Stan sighs.

"That smell in the room," Stan says, his fist opening and closing over the hollow of his throat, as if he's looking for the crucifix that he doesn't wear. "What if, um. And this will sound crazy, but-"

"Really, Stan, it will sound crazy?" Kenny huffs. "Say it!"

"What if this Craig person sold his soul to the devil?" Stan asks, his face going bright red. "What if that's how he has this – power?"

Wendy scoffs, turning away for a moment as if to collect herself.

"I'm sorry," she says. "But no. And Cartman is wrong, too. A magical teleportation device? Guys, if we don't start thinking logically we're not going to be able to help anybody."

"Stan, I have to agree with her," Kyle says, disturbed by Kenny's sudden silence, his gaze a bit fogged, as if he's working this out from within whatever fantasy land he inhabits. Maybe Cartman had something when he accused Kenny of being irrevocably scrambled by his history with drugs; it's too sad to think about now, but certainly possible. "Look," Kyle says, going to Cartman's desk, where he left Christophe's letter. Kyle smooths it out, overtaken for a moment by a further dip in his spirits, because he needs Christophe more than ever, and this worn piece of paper is all he has left of him. "Clyde, can you have this scanned for fingerprints, please? If Cartman is wrong about Craig, or, God help us, if he's conspiring with him and won't be back, we need to formulate a secondary theory. We don't know what sort of danger Karen and the boys are in. We might not have much time."

"Good, yes, let's focus on the letter," Wendy says, and Kyle experiences a surge of affection for her that feels familiar in its suddenness. Kenny and Stan are still looking at each other as if they're having some silent conversation, Stan contributing his superstitious religious ideas and Kenny his private mania.

"Alright," Clyde says, taking the letter from Kyle. "You guys come into the interview room, okay? I can't just let you wander around the station."

"Can I come?" Ike asks.

"No," Clyde says. "You just sit in there and sober up. Drink the coffee I gave you." When Clyde walks to the interview room Wendy follows, pulling Kenny with her. Stan hesitates, and he seems hurt when he looks over at Kyle.

"You don't actually believe him, do you?" Kyle whispers. "Kenny? About this – dying business?"

"How can you still be so closed minded?" Stan asks. "We promised we wouldn't think he was crazy. You even told him you didn't!"

"Well, what else could I say, Stan? Do you think he's been to hell and back? Literally? I don't even believe in hell! Not to belittle your faith, but for God's sake, how could such a thing exist? Kenny is just having some kind of lapse related to his drug use, false memories, it's not uncommon—"

"And what are we, just another one of his false memories?" Stan asks, frowning. "You're really being a jerk, Kyle."

"What!"

"Guys!" Clyde calls, waving them over. "C'mon, seriously. I need you to all stay together."

He sounds as if he's on the verge of tears, so Kyle begins to comply, following Stan toward the room, fuming about that comment. Remembering the thing Cartman secreted away in his desk drawer when they burst into his office, he pauses.

"I need to use the restroom," Kyle says. "Where is it?"

"Just over there," Clyde says. "Toward the lobby. Be quick, alright?"

"You're not feeling sick again, are you?" Stan asks.

"No, I just need to pee," Kyle says, wanting to add some cold remark to the end of that, but either too tired or too moved by the concern in Stan's eyes to do it. "I'll be there in a moment."

"Kay," Stan says, and there's a softness in his tone that's akin to apology, which is ridiculous, because Kyle is aware that he was being both closed minded and a jerk just then. No one who says 'not to belittle your faith' is ever intending to do anything but that. He just didn't think Stan took these things so goddamn literally; if he does he might have tried harder at being straight.

Kyle makes his way toward the restroom, doubling back and slipping into Cartman's office when Clyde has departed to do the fingerprinting. The smell of the office makes his heart beat faster, as if the lingering presence of that nightmarish man is accusing him, seeing this somehow. Kyle steels himself and creeps toward the desk, pausing to listen for any sign that Clyde knows what he's about. He hears nothing, and slips the uppermost drawer on the left side of Cartman's desk open, immediately identifying the thing that he saw Cartman clutching when they came into his office: a small, white square of paper with handwriting on it. A child's handwriting, he sees, as he lifts it from the drawer. In crayon.

To Eric, Love Butters is inscribed on the paper, and beneath those words there is a sloppily drawn heart with a smiley face inside its purple parameters. Confused, Kyle turns the paper over. It isn't a paper at all but a worn old photograph: a school photo of a smiling blond boy, maybe seven or eight years old, wearing a pale blue turtleneck. It's Butters, certainly; there's no mistaking his uncommonly kind eyes. Kyle's eyes water as he looks down at the photo, realizing that he was wrong. This was what Cartman, awful as he is, was treasuring when they interrupted him. Mourning over, more like, and before he even knew that Butters is in danger, lost. Kyle puts the picture away, face down inside the drawer, and the uncomfortable sadness that's making his eyes sting swells. Who the hell is he to laugh at Stan for fearing the devil? The people they love are in trouble, and they've got almost no chance of helping them, unless Cartman is right about Craig, which, Kyle fears, he is not. Stupidly, insanely, following a line of reasoning that he might scoff at Kenny for voicing, he thinks that the continued ebbing of his headache is a sign that they're actually not on the right trail at all.

He walks out of Cartman's office in a kind of fog, feeling hopeless. In the interview room there's lots of excited talk, and Kyle hesitates, afraid to know what their new theories are.

"Hey." It's the boy in the cell – Ike. He grins when Kyle looks at him. "You okay?"

"Not really," Kyle says. He walks toward Ike, trying to find something familiar in his features, though Kenny said that he's adopted, so even if they are brothers, they should not resemble each other. Ike is not quite handsome, though maybe he could be if he polished himself up a bit, and he's got something that Kyle envies more than good looks, a smirking confidence that rivals even Kenny's when he's in his best mood. "What have you been arrested for?" Kyle asks when he's standing only a few feet from the cell.

"Public drunkenness," Ike says. "Every time there's a big blizzard, everybody in town acts like the world is ending. I like to get into it, you know, festively? It's fun to pretend the world is ending."

"Why would that be fun?" Kyle asks, and Ike laughs at his scowl; he seems to still be drunk, and there's a not quite disgusting but certainly unsavory smell emanating from the cell.

"Dude, seriously?" Ike says. "You don't get the appeal of the end of the world? It's like, all your responsibilities are out the window! You don't need to find a job, you don't need to drink less or eat more vegetables. That's awesome, don't you think?"

"If you have nothing to live for, I suppose," Kyle says, unnerved. He felt like this once, very precisely, but that was when he didn't have Stan to give him a reason for requiring a corporeal form.

"Well, anyway," Ike says. "If the forgotten boys are real, the world must be ending."

"You heard about us?" Kyle says. "Kenny told you?"

"Not directly, but my mom is one of South Park's major gossips," Ike says. "Information is power, that sort of thing. And she really felt for the McCormicks when their nutso son started insisting that she had a kid she forgot. It was always like, 'poor Kenny, he was probably born with brain damage from all the crack that woman smokes.' I used to get my parents riled up, saying maybe Kenny was right. They'd get kind of furiously angry, and I'd think, like – why would they get that mad unless some part of them was worried that they did have a kid they forgot about?"

"So you think Kenny is sane, for the most part?" Kyle asks, trying to feel betrayed about this, even as, here in South Park, he is himself a potential figment of Kenny's imagination.

"Kenny's sane," Ike says. "He's one of those people who's too sane to be fooled by the rest of us, you know what I mean?"

Kyle narrows his eyes. "Are you stoned?" he asks.

"I don't know," Ike says, sighing. "I intended to be, but then I got arrested. Whoops. My mom's gonna kick my ass."

"Your mom, ah. What's she like? Other than being a gossip."

"She's a battleship," Ike says. Kyle nods, thinking of his own mother, although, even if he doesn't accept Kenny's alternate reality, Miranda Lambert never really was that, not in the most technical sense.

"I'm adopted, too," Kyle says.

"Have you met your biological parents?" Ike asks, wrapping a hand around one of the bars. Kyle shakes his head.

"They couldn't be located," he says. "I was abandoned, you see. In a parking lot. With no memories."

"Jesus, dude." Ike seems genuinely sympathetic, but people who are stoned usually are. "Mine were just poor. They tried to get me back, once. I don't really remember it. That's what always made me think, you know, fuck, Kenny could be right about everything. Because I almost like, got extradited to Canada by these vile people, and I don't even remember it."

"Yes, well, you had the excuse of being very young, I presume," Kyle says. His heart is beating a little too fast, and he both wants to return to Stan and to stay here talking to this strange person who feels like the others in South Park have, not like someone he forgot but like some present he didn't know he was allowed to unwrap.

"I was young," Ike says. "Three years old. But that's amazing, isn't it? How we have to learn to remember things? It's a skill. A physiological one, I guess, but even so. We're not born with the equipment to remember what happens to us. We kind of, like, learn that we need to."

"Oh, I see," Kyle says, narrowing his eyes. "You're one of those people who can sound brilliant when you're fucked up. I envy that. I mostly just weep and vomit."

"That makes me sad," Ike says, but he's smiling. "That my older brother would be the one who needed taking care of, you know, if we got trashed together at my bachelor party."

"I've never had a sibling," Kyle says, looking away from him. "Not that I can remember. I wouldn't even know where to begin with one."

"I got in touch with my biological parents when I was eighteen," Ike says. He presses his face between the bars, the span of his dark brown eyes just barely fitting there. "They're still married, and they have kids. Three kids."

"Jesus," Kyle says. He puts his hands on his hips, then in his pants pockets, feeling awkward. "You must hate them."

"No, they're irrelevant," Ike says. "My parents, my real parents – your parents, if Kenny has his way – they saved my life. I mean, I belonged to them before they found me. Does that sound romantic? I'm usually not. I heard your friend saying things about the devil."

"He's my boyfriend," Kyle says, as if that will make a difference to this kid. At any rate, he doesn't want to talk about Stan's religious beliefs with a stranger, even if this stranger is supposedly part of his real family. "And he's the other lost boy, incidentally, if Kenny is right. You really think he could be?"

"Don't you?" Ike asks. "I mean, you're one of them."

"I don't know what I am," Kyle says, muttering. He looks at the interview room and sees Stan watching him through the room's probably bulletproof window, looking worried. Kyle returns his gaze to Ike. "I should go join them," he says.

"Okay," Ike says. "Hey," he says when Kyle starts to walk away.

"What?"

"I wish I remembered you," Ike says. He smiles, suddenly not very smug, sort of pathetic-looking with his hands around the bars of his cell. He's got bags under his eyes. "If that counts for anything."

"Why?" Kyle asks, fighting the urge to feel touched by that. "Because you always wanted a brother?" 

"Well, yes," Ike says. "And an ally against my parents. I asked them why they didn't have children of their own, I guess I always assumed it was some physical impossibility, and they just seemed really lost for how to answer me. It was like they didn't know, almost like they'd never even thought about it? Kenny's idea was always that the town would have been better if you guys hadn't left, or at least if we hadn't all forgotten you. We used to get high together, me and Kenny, when I was twelve."

"When you were twelve?" Kyle says, putting his palm against his forehead.

"I guess it's not so different from getting excited about the end of the world," Ike says. "I liked the idea that everything would have been different. That things wouldn't be like they are now."

"Don't your parents take care of you?" Kyle asks, his throat tightening.

"Sure," Ike says. "I feel bad for them. I'm a pretty big pain in the ass, son-wise. My therapist says I'm testing them, like, that I'm subconsciously afraid they'll send me back to the orphanage, so I'm always trying to find out how much they'll put up with."

"You're in therapy?"

"On occasion. Usually it's a court-ordered deal."

Kyle wants to pull up a chair and talk to him for awhile, about therapy and these parents of his, and about testing people's limits when you can't accept that they could love you. He doesn't, because he can feel Stan watching him through that window, needing him close, and because he still has a frighteningly acute sense that the time they have left together might be very short.

"Well, it was good to meet you," Kyle says to Ike. "I'm sorry that I won't be able to drink with you at your bachelor party. I think I would have liked that."

"Why can't you?" Ike asks, managing to look sincerely regretful. "I mean, you're here now. You never know."

"Of course," Kyle says, though he wants to say, Because the world is ending, did we not just discuss this? "Thanks, then, for the invitation." He gives Ike a wave and heads toward the interview room. Stan's expression brightens a little when he sees Kyle heading toward them.

"Well, that makes no sense," Wendy is saying to Kenny when Kyle sits down, dragging his chair closer to Stan's. Kyle wants to caution Wendy that making sense isn't a top priority for Kenny at the moment. Stan puts an arm around him, and Kyle rests his hand on Stan's thigh.

"I know it doesn't," Kenny says. He's got his elbows on the interview table, he and Wendy seated across from Kyle and Stan. "But if you'd been there, Wendy – tell her, Kyle. They were just gone."

"It's true," Kyle says. "One minute we could hear them laughing like everything was fine, then that scream, then nothing. Tweek's coffee was still warm."

Wendy shudders, and when Kenny takes her hand she brings his fingers up to her lips to kiss them. Kyle wants to climb wholly into Stan's lap, but he's afraid he'll fall asleep if he does. He's still dreadfully tired, though his head is a lot better.

"Where were you?" Stan asks him. "Talking to that kid – your – um?"

"My brother, I guess," Kyle says, as a gesture of solidarity toward Kenny, who gives him a suspicious look in return. He's not easily fooled. "He's an oddball. Which is a relief, for some reason. Also, Kenny, I went into Cartman's office and snooped a bit. I have to say, I don't think he would do anything to hurt Butters."

"Maybe he didn't intend to get him involved," Kenny says. "He's careless with people."

Kyle is going to object by pointing out that all careless people aren't necessarily evil, but Clyde is returning, so he shuts his mouth.

"Well?" Kenny says when Clyde leans in the doorway. Clyde shrugs.

"There were six sets of fingerprints on the letter," he says. "The only ones that match anything we have on file here were yours and Cartman's."

"It makes sense," Wendy says, sighing. "They wouldn't have the fingerprints of an eight-year-old on file." She squeezes Kenny's arm when he looks down at the table. "Now what?"

"Tell me more about what Karen said to you," Kenny says, looking up at Kyle. "About that Damien guy."

"Damien?" Clyde says before Kyle can open his mouth, and they all turn to him.

"You know that name?" Kenny asks. "There's something familiar about it – did he go to school with us?"

"Henry always told me he had, but I couldn't remember him being there at school," Clyde says.

"Henry?" Kenny says, frowning.

"Um, Henrietta," Clyde says. His face colors. "This guy named Damien, she always complained about him, how he would borrow money and cigarettes from her and never pay her back. She liked him, though, I think. He was older. Weird. I only saw him once."

"Oh, Clyde," Wendy says when Kenny frowns down at the table, processing this. "You're not still – you and Henrietta-?"

"No," Clyde says, bright red now. "I haven't seen her since senior year. And if you're getting bent out of shape on Becca's behalf, you should know that she was fucking your boyfriend in high school."

"Yeah, that would be why me and Token broke up," Wendy says, glowering at him. "But thanks for letting me know, ten years later."

"I only just found out this summer!" Clyde says. "You might have told me back then, too, you know."

"You were fucking Henrietta!" Wendy says, shouting. "That kind of gave me the impression that you didn't give a shit what Becca did in the meantime. God, why did you two ever get married?"

"Oh, that's hilarious, coming from you." Clyde looks like he's going to melt, or like he wants to, so he can escape Wendy's accusing scowl. "How'd you know about me and Henrietta, anyway?"

"You made the mistake of telling Cartman, genius!"

"I didn't tell him, he saw us-"

"Excuse me, um," Kyle says, holding up a hand. "As fascinating as all of this small town personal history stuff can be, we're a little pressed for time here, I think. Clyde, this person, this Henrietta – do you think she's still in touch with Damien?"

"I've got no idea," Clyde says. "Like I said, I haven't spoken to her in years. I wouldn't be surprised if she still sees him, though. She was pretty into him."

"You were fucking Henrietta in high school?" Kenny says, and Kyle can't decide if Kenny looks impressed or horrified, maybe a little of both. Wendy smacks Kenny's arm.

"I told you that," she says, under her breath.

"No, I think I would have remembered."

"Maybe it was Tweek that I told," Wendy says, tapping her chin with her fingers, looking thoughtful.

"Anyway," Stan says, helpfully, and Kyle gives his thigh an appreciative squeeze. "Clyde, do you have this girl's number?"

"No," he says. "I deleted it out of my phone when we split up, but." He quirks his mouth and looks around at each of them as if begging them not to draw any conclusions. "I do know where she lives, unless she's moved really recently. In her mom's house, out by that old roller skating rink on Hemphill."

"Then that's where we should go," Kyle says, because his headache is back, and he feels as if it's Christophe speaking to him somehow, though that doesn't seem quite right, because the pain between his temples is sinister and quick, venomously alert within him.

"You think this guy might have done something to my sister?" Kenny asks.

"Possibly," Kyle says. "It was very worrying, the way she talked about him like he had to be kept secret at all cost."

"What was he like when you met him?" Kenny asks, whirling on Clyde, who is still bright red.

"I don't know if I'd say I met him," Clyde says. "I saw him, once, when he showed up at her house, when I was on my way out. She didn't introduce me. He was really – intense. Mean looking."

"Karen told me he's sweet," Kyle says.

"Yes, well, Karen is an idiot," Kenny says. "About men, I mean. She's got our mother's taste in men. I had no trouble believing that she'd hooked up with Craig, if that tells you anything. Goddammit, Kyle, why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"What would you have done if I had?" Kyle asks, though he does feel terrible. "Called up your old classmates to see if any of them could recall fucking someone who had a friend named Damien?"

"Can't we just look this Henrietta up in the phone book and call her about Damien?" Stan asks. He touches Kyle's wrist as he says so, gently asking him to calm down. Kyle wants to, but his renewed headache is making him feel insane, and like he might personally be better off if they don't work all of this out. It doesn't even feel like a headache so much as a vice that's tightening around his skull, and he thinks of what his therapists always told him about why he couldn't remember his first ten years: he was protecting himself from pain.

"She wouldn't answer the phone," Clyde says. "Not for a number she doesn't know, and maybe not even for one that she recognized. It was a quirk she had. She didn't like having her thought process interrupted by a 'social alarm,' and she said cell phones were for conformists."

"Oh, Christ," Wendy mutters, rubbing her eyes. "Alright, well, Hemphill isn't too far. If we're going, we should get over there before the roads get any worse."

The station's front door opens, and they all turn to see a middle-aged couple bundled in heavy coats hurrying inside. The woman takes the lead, looking furious. She's got red hair of a very particular shade, and Kyle can feel Stan's concern settling on him as his stomach drops.

"Fuck me, here we go," Clyde mutters. He leaves the interview room and walks toward the couple. "Hey, Mr. and Mrs.-"

"Ike bubbeh, are you alright?" the woman asks, ignoring Clyde and rushing to the holding cell. "Oi, look at you, where on earth is your coat?"

"It got lost in the shuffle," Ike says. "I'm okay, ma, really. I'm sorry-"

"You!" The woman – Mrs. Broflovski, Kyle gathers – turns on Clyde and points her finger at him. "You need to tell your Nazi bastard of a boss to stop picking on my Ike! He's not underage anymore, and he can go out drinking at bars if he likes! He's not hurting anyone! He doesn't even have a car!"

"Ma," Ike says, moaning, his hand over his face.

"I've got plenty of evidence for a harassment lawsuit," says the man; Mr. Broflovski, presumably. He's on the thin side, with a goatee, and – Jesus, a yamaka. "Everybody in this town is familiar with Eric Cartman's feelings toward our faith."

"Ma'am, sir," Clyde says, sounding very tired. "I understand that you're upset, but-"

"Upset doesn't even begin to cover it!" Mrs. Broflovski shouts. She's hefty, the kind of woman who was maybe not pretty but desirably buxom in her youth. "I know that bastard would just love to run us out of town, but we will not be terrorized!"

"Ma, really," Ike says. "I threw a bar stool at a guy. It was my fault."

"Quiet, Ike!" she says. "We're here to post bail," she says to Clyde. "And we will be filing a complaint and appealing for a full refund."

"Sure, that's – within your rights." Clyde is fumbling nervously with the keys to the holding cell.

"Don't you people have better things to be doing on the eve of a blizzard?" Mr. Broflovski asks. "Clearing the roads or something?"

"That's not really our department," Clyde says, his voice dropping lower with every word. He throws the door of the jail cell open and Ike walks out. He looks toward Kyle, and it's a significant enough glance to get the attention of the others, who follow his eyes. Kyle doesn't want to meet the eyes of these people who are supposedly his parents, but he feels like he should, like they're expecting something of him. Expecting him to behave.

"Well, it was nice to meet you," Ike says when an awkward silence persists, the Broflovskis observing the group at the door of the interview room with quiet confusion. "Kyle," Ike adds.

"Yeah," Kyle says, trying not to look at Mrs. Broflovski again, and failing. She's looking at him, too, frowning, but it's not recognition, and he doesn't recognize her, either. Just that hair color, and that tendency to browbeat public servants whenever possible.

"What's going on?" Mrs. Broflovski asks. "Kenny?" 

"Hey," he says. "Uh, nice to see you guys."

"We're kind of in the middle of an investigation here," Clyde says, his chest puffing a bit. "If you'll excuse us."

"I won't excuse any of what's going on in this town!" Mrs. Broflovski says, turning to jab her finger at him again. "You can count on that! Eric Cartman is a menace and a bigot and he does not control the government here, not if I have anything to say about it!"

"Yes, ma'am."

"C'mon, Ike," Mr. Broflovski says, taking his son's wrist like he's an errant twelve-year-old, not a grown man. "The roads are only getting worse."

"You might have endangered all our lives with this nonsense!" Mrs. Broflovski says to Clyde, who seems too weary, or maybe frightened, to respond to anything further. Mrs. Broflovski starts patting her coat pockets like she's looking for something, staying in place and huffing with indignation while Mr. Broflovski pulls Ike toward the front door.

"Honey?" he says when he gets there. "Shouldn't we go? I've left the check for bail in the usual spot," he says to Clyde, gesturing to the front desk.

"Thanks, sir," Clyde says.

"I just," Mrs. Broflovski says, pausing with her elbows poking out like a chicken, frowning down at her purse. "Oh – that. I think I thought I'd. Lost my purse." She looks up at Kyle again, frowning.

"Well, it's right there, dear," Mr. Broflovski. "C'mon, we should really get on the road."

"Yes, yes," she says irritably, still looking at Kyle. "I'm sorry, sweetheart, do I know you?" she asks.

"No," Kyle says, and Stan must hear the hurt he's trying to hold in, because he touches the small of Kyle's back.

"Sheila, really," Mr. Broflovski says.

"Ah – yes, okay, I'm coming." She's still flustered on the way to the door, still frantically checking her pockets. "I just – there's – do you have the keys?"

"They're right here!"

"I'll see you around," Ike calls, waving to Kyle.

Kyle waves back, and soon as they're out the door he turns into Stan's opening arms.

"Did you remember them at all?" Kenny asks, the volume of his voice like a hammer to the head. Kyle feels Stan go tense, and he holds Kyle more tightly.

"Back off for a second, yeah?" Stan says. "Clyde, where did you say the bathroom was?"

"Right over there."

Stan takes Kyle to the men's restroom, leans him against the sinks and ducks down to look sympathetically into his face. Kyle isn't crying, and the headache has actually subsided, though he can still feel the weight of it. He waves his hand through the air.

"I'm fine," he says.

"You're shaking."

"A little, but. That woman, that man. They're supposed to be, um."

"Did you feel anything? You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, but-"

"I felt like she was looking for me," Kyle says, his voice wavering a little. "In her pockets."

"Dude." Stan sighs and straightens. He kisses the top of Kyle's head. "I think she was."

For awhile they just hold each other, Kyle's ass resting on one of the sinks, his face buried in Stan's chest. The bathroom is quiet, the voices of the others muffled by the heavy door. One of the sinks drips, and Kyle listens to that, and Stan's breathing, trying not to think about how dark the night they're about to venture out into will be, and the nagging feeling that he won't see the sun rise again.

"I'm glad I saw them," he says. "If only once."

"That's how I felt about my mom," Stan says, softly. He strokes Kyle's hair, his other arm snug around Kyle's waist. "I think I'd like to see her again, but I'm not sure what I would do if I did. I'm just glad she saw me. I'm glad she knows I'm not gone, even if she doesn't remember that she lost me."

"I'm sorry I was a jerk before," Kyle says when he lifts his head, feeling guilty about the pathetic look on his face, because he hopes it will excuse him. Stan shrugs.

"I was being stupid," he says. "I don't know if I believe in hell. I don't even know if I believe Kenny. I just think Kenny believes himself, you know? And that it means – something."

"I hope he'll never try to explain any of this to Wendy," Kyle says, shuddering at the thought. It would break her heart. "That's good, I guess, that he feels like we'll love him anyway. I think she would, too, but that she wouldn't, ah. Be able to go on as they are now, if he said any of that to her. I think he knows that."

"What made you say that about Cartman?" Stan asks. "That you don't think he's involved in this?"

"Oh – this picture of Butters in his desk drawer. From when they were children. You know, I recognized him right away, Butters, and I thought it was his eyes or something, but maybe it was more than that. Jesus, I don't think it really hit me until now. We grew up here. We knew each other. I – loved you, I loved you before Akron, when I was a little boy. I was always looking for you."

"Well, you found me," Stan says. He kisses Kyle, just softly at first, and it intensifies to the point that Kyle starts to get hard, his hands closing in the front of Stan's sweater and his mouth getting dangerously wet. If their last fuck before the end of the world is up against the sink in a public restroom, he'll be a little sad, but he'll take it, already reaching for the button on Stan's jeans.

"Guys!"

It's Kenny, of course, bursting in.

"Are you ready to go?" he asks. Stan shields Kyle with his body, protecting his modesty. Kenny grins when he sees their swollen lips and Kyle's hair, which has been disordered by Stan's hands. "Oh, fuck, really? Now?" He looks pleased, though, slightly.

"We're coming," Stan says.

"Fine, but you'd better do it quick," Kenny says. Kyle rolls his eyes. "I want to get out of here before – oh, shit."

Kyle can guess that Kenny's disappointment means Cartman has returned. He moans and turns to splash some cold water on his face. Stan rubs his back while he does so, which is no help in terms of getting rid of his boner.

"I think we're gonna figure this out," Stan says. "I've got a good feeling."

"Me too," Kyle says, though his feeling about what will happen when they figure this out is anything but good.

They leave the bathroom, Kyle still a bit annoyed that they didn't get a chance to actually do anything to each other, though it would have been humiliating to do it here, even if they hadn't been caught. He's still vaguely aroused, despite the cold water, and unwilling to let go of Stan's arm as they rejoin the others. Cartman doesn't seem happy, and is not in the company of Craig. Kyle realizes that he thinks he knows what Craig looks like, though he's never seen him. He's picturing an angry-looking little boy with black hair, which can't be right.

"Where's Craig?" Kenny asks as Cartman blusters past them, into his office.

"The bastard wasn't home," Cartman says. "He must know we're on to him. I tore the whole place apart, but there was nothing. His car was missing from the garage, that faggy Lotus, or whatever the hell it's called."

Cartman goes to the bottom drawer of his desk and gets something out: a bottle of whiskey and a glass. He pours some and throws it back like water, then pours more.

"I even drove to Hammerheads to see if he was there," Cartman says. "It was closed. Goddammit, goddammit!" He punches the desk, growls, and drinks again.

"Well, we've come up with an alternate plan of action," Wendy says. Cartman looks up at her, then past her, frowning when he sees the holding cell.

"Where's that Canadian?" he asks.

"His parents came to bail him out," Clyde says. "You just missed them."

"Well, thank Christ for small favors," Cartman mutters into his glass, emptying it.

"They seem convinced that you're persecuting them for their religion," Kyle says, annoyed with him for insulting them. Cartman snorts.

"If only I could," he says, sounding a little drunk already. "If I'm persecuting them for anything it's for raising a complete fuck-up of a Canadian who makes trouble in my town."

"Ike gets arrested often?" Kyle says, fretting.

"Weekly," Clyde says.

"But enough about that useless shithead," Cartman says. "What's this alternate plan?"

"We think the father of Karen's baby might have had something to do with this," Kenny says. "The real father."

"The real father?" Cartman laughs. "Ha! I knew it. Craig could never actually manage to shove his limp dick into a chick. So who knocked her up?"

"A guy named Damien," Wendy says. "Karen wanted it kept secret, not just that he got her pregnant but that he was hanging around town at all. Apparently Henrietta knew him back in high school, and apparently she doesn't answer her phone, so our plan, at the moment, is to go to her house and ask her if she knows where he's staying, if he's in town."

"Jesus Christ, whose idea was that?" Cartman asks, looking at Clyde, who shrinks, his shoulders lifting. "Now's not really the time to resume chubby chasing, Donovan."

"If you've got a better idea, let's hear it," Stan says. Cartman glares at him, gulping from his whiskey glass.

"No, great, let's go ask fucking Henrietta Biggle for help," Cartman says. "Sure, wonderful. Maybe Clyde can get laid while we're there, too."

"Cartman!" Clyde says. "I mean - Chief. I think we need to hurry. This guy, he was bad news. Henrietta was always telling me things about him, and I thought maybe she was just exaggerating, you know, she's pretty dramatic, but she made it sound like he was, I don't know. Potentially, like. Really dangerous."

"Yeah?" Cartman snarls and pats the gun that's holstered on his hip. "Well, the motherfucker's about to find out that I'm really dangerous, too. Let's go."

They pile into Cartman's Hummer, the only available vehicle that can contain all six of them and, hopefully, traverse the bad roads. Kyle is in back, pressed snugly between Stan and Wendy, Kenny on Wendy's other side. Clyde sits up front with Cartman. Nobody speaks for the first few minutes, and Kyle can hear Kenny chewing on his thumbnail. Wendy puts a stop to this without speaking, taking his hand and clasping it inside both of hers. Kenny's knee immediately begins bouncing.

"So, Clyde," he says. "Tell me about you and Henrietta."

"No, thank you," Clyde says. He's staring out the passenger side window, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Please?" Kenny says. "I need some distraction. I'm going fucking nuts, thinking about what this guy might be doing to my sister, to Butters-"

"You shut the fuck up about Butters!" Cartman says, shouting. "He can - he can take care of himself." He doesn't sound confident about this at all.

"God, fine," Clyde says, groaning. "What do you want to know?"

"How did that even happen?" Kenny asks. "You and her? You were such a jock, and she was such a - well, a Goth."

"I was a Goth for a few months," Kyle says, wistful and feeling tired. Only Stan seems to hear him, and he tucks an arm around Kyle's shoulders, kissing his cheek. If it wasn't for his reemerging headache Kyle would be asleep already, cozy in the warmth of this massive car, so high above the road.

"It just happened," Clyde says, sharply. "She was - ah. We understood each other."

"I'm sure she found him crying and thought he was deep or something," Cartman says. He looks at Kyle in the rear view mirror. "Clyde used to cry all the time."

"No, I didn't," Clyde says, but he's blushing again.

"Yes, you did," Kenny says.

"Quit picking on him," Wendy says, smacking Kenny's knee. "Clyde, honey, why didn't you just leave Becca for Henrietta? You and Becca were always such a horrible couple."

"Thanks for that," Clyde says, turning to glare at her. "We're still married, by the way."

"I thought she kicked you out?" Cartman says.

"Well - yeah-"

"Clyde's been living at the station since Thanksgiving," Cartman announces cheerfully.

"Don't be so fucking smug," Kenny says. "Your marriage is on the rocks, too, last time I checked."

"I told you, asshole, don't say a fucking word to me about Butters right now!"

"But anyway," Wendy says, loudly. "Back to my question. Clyde? Why wasn't it Henrietta you ended up with, if she was worth cheating on Becca with?"

"I don't know, Wendy, why don't you ask her?" Clyde says. "She's the one who told me she never wanted to see me again. God, this is so humiliating - can we talk about something else? Wendy's failed marriage, maybe?"

"Talk about it all you like," Wendy says, gritting her teeth. "Just keep in mind that my husband might be in mortal danger right now."

"No, come on, let's talk about something happy," Kenny says. "Before I go out of my mind."

"You're about fifteen years too late to stop that from happening," Cartman says.

"Stan and Kyle," Kenny says, ignoring him. "Look at them."

Everyone does, Cartman frowning at them in the rear view mirror.

"What about us?" Stan asks, tucking Kyle in a little closer. Kyle leans into him, not eager to become a topic of discussion.

"You're together again," Kenny says. "Whatever split you up, it was powerful enough to erase the memories of a whole fucking town. But you two were like, 'fuck that.' You found each other anyway."

"Only because of Christophe," Kyle says. He sits up with alarm, sucking in his breath.

"What's wrong?" Stan asks.

"The letter - Christophe's letter. I left it at the police station."

"So?" Cartman says. "What were you going to do, show it to Henrietta? That bitch can't read French."

"Hey, lay off of her, alright?" Clyde says, glowering. Cartman snorts.

"Oh, here we fucking go," he mutters.

"Do I give you a hard time for your taste in - partners?" Clyde asks. "No, I don't, so-"

"Don't even fucking try to compare Butters to that cow!"

"That's really hilarious, you making fun of someone's weight!"

"Do you want to be demoted, Donovan? Is that what you want?"

"Hey, guys!" Wendy says. "This isn't helping! You know what, maybe we should just listen to the radio until we get there."

"Fucking fine by me," Clyde says, hunching over against the window. Stan squeezes Kyle's hand.

"I'm sorry we left your letter," he says, whispering as Cartman tunes the radio, still muttering about Gothic cows under his breath. "I know you like having it with you."

"It's just that it's all I have left of him," Kyle says. His headache is roiling between his ears, getting worse. "And, this is silly, but." He sighs and presses his face to Stan's neck. "I felt like it was protecting me, somehow. Having that scrap of him with me."

"Oh," Stan says, and Kyle can hear that he's insulted, as if he's just been told that he's not protection enough. Kyle grins against Stan's skin, because he's cute, still managing to be jealous of Christophe.

"Of course, as long as you're here," Kyle says, very softly, his arm sliding across Stan's chest. Stan nuzzles at him, sighing into his hair. Up front, the radio is playing a pop song that sounds like a call to action, if that action is frenetic dancing.

"Can we listen to something more fitting the mood, please?" Wendy says. "This song is absurd, the people we love might be-"

"I like this song, goddammit, so shut up!" Cartman says. He turns it up, glowering at the windshield. Wendy groans and collapses against Kenny, relenting, and the mood in the car darkens, despite the song, or maybe because of it.

Henrietta Biggle's house sits alone on a stretch of dismal road just past what appears to be a completely defunct shopping center, signs on what used to be shops crumbled or left behind only as a shadow of the letters that were once hanging there. Her house doesn't look particularly well kept, though it's hard to tell with the snow still coming down so hard. Kyle almost doesn't want to leave the Hummer, but as soon as Cartman cuts the engine he can feel the cold creeping in.

"She'd better not be in the middle of sacrificing a goat or something," Cartman grumbles as the six of them make their way toward the snow-covered front porch. Henrietta's front walk hasn't been shoveled; nor has her driveway.

"I just hope she's home," Wendy says. "Why do none of you have coats on?" she asks, rubbing Kenny's arms when he shivers.

"We left in a hurry," Kenny says.

"People were getting sucked out of the air," Kyle says, huddling against Stan. "There was a sense of urgency."

Cartman takes the lead and raps hard on Henrietta's front door. It's green, the paint peeling and chipped away in places, and after a few seconds of Cartman's obnoxiously insistent knocking, a woman's face appears in the window beside the door. Kyle had imagined she'd be obese, thinking that if Cartman criticizes someone's weight they should at least be bigger than him, but she's just slightly plump and sort of cherubic-looking, despite her heavy eye makeup and black hair. She frowns at them.

"What the hell is this?" she asks, her words muffled by the glass.

"Official police business!" Cartman bellows. He slaps some sort of identification against the window, startling her. "Open up!"

She scowls at him, and her face disappears from the window. One lock is undone, then another, then yet another, which causes Kyle to look at Stan to see if he's finding this odd, too. He clearly is, and Kyle squeezes Stan's hand, so pleased, even in the midst of his raging headache and while freezing his ass off, to at last have this person who he can exchange mutually judgmental looks with in public.

"What the ha-" Henrietta freezes when she sees that Clyde is among them, sheepishly lingering at the back of the group. She frowns deeply.

"Hey, Henry," Clyde says, muttering. He looks like he's afraid she's going to strike him. She does cut a kind of intimidating figure, though she's short and wearing only a knee-length purple robe and slippers.

"What do you want?" Henrietta asks, looking at Cartman again. "Are you arresting me or something?"

"Should I be?" Cartman asks, returning her look of hatred. "We're here about three missing persons, and Clyde says there's reason to believe you might have information for us."

"That's not what I said exactly!" Clyde protests when she gives him a look of furious disbelief. "I only - Henry, that guy you used to hang around with, Damien. We think he might have done something."

"Oh, fuck," she says, sounding neither alarmed nor surprised. "Alright, come in. I haven't seen him in about two years, but if he's involved, whoever's missing is probably already dead."

"What!" Cartman and Kenny shriek in unison.

"No, no," Wendy says, pressing her hands to her mouth. "Don't say that."

"What's it got to do with you, Testaburger?" Henrietta asks. She walks into the house and everyone follows, except Cartman, who is frozen out on the porch, twitching as if he can't decide whether to start raging or sobbing. "And who the hell are these two?" Henrietta asks, gesturing to Stan and Kyle.

"Concerned friends," Kyle says, not wanting to explain the whole thing. He looks around Henrietta's house, which is decorated with dated kitsch, dusty collections of animal figurines on an old bookshelf in the corner and a yellowed doily draped over the back of the floral print couch. The living room smells of incense and tuna fish.

"Get in here," Kenny says, dragging Cartman into the house. "She might be wrong."

"Tweek is one of the people who was taken," Wendy says. "And Karen McCormick was another, seven months pregnant. And Butters," she adds, looking warily at Cartman, who seems to no longer know where he is. He's still standing near the door, and Kenny is still holding his shoulders as if to support him.

"Butters?" Henrietta says. "Oh, Christ. And Tweek? Karen I understand, but what would Damien want with those two?"

"Why do you say that about Karen?" Kenny asks. "You knew they were sleeping together?"

"Well, yeah. He was obsessed with her. She was 'special,' he always said." Henrietta rolls her eyes, and after she has her gaze falls on Clyde. "You're a cop," she says, sounding amused.

"You didn't know?" Clyde asks. He looks suddenly uncomfortable and newly pathetic in his uniform, like a boy in a Halloween costume.

"I don't exactly stalk your Facebook page. How's old Red? Still cheerleading in her spare time?"

"Becca's an accountant," Clyde says. "We're not really-"

"Excuse me!" Kenny shouts. "You guys can get reacquainted later, I think." He lets go of Cartman and walks to Henrietta. "Tell me everything you know about this guy and my sister."

"Well, alright," Henrietta says. "But I'm going to get a drink and a cigarette first. Does anyone else want one?"

"I'll have one of both," Kenny says, falling to a seat on her couch. He puts his head in his hands and Wendy sits beside him, tucking her arm around his waist.

"Could I just have some water, please?" Kyle asks. His headache feels more like a head injury now, and he keeps touching the back of his skull to make sure that it isn't actually as blown apart as it's beginning to feel.

"Fine," Henrietta says. "Come with me."

Kyle follows her into the kitchen, and Clyde does, too, his hands in his back pockets. The kitchen is like the living room, seemingly decorated by a sixty-year-old woman, lots of wood paneling and cutesy dish towels. Henrietta gets a glass down and fills it with tap water for Kyle, who gulps it greedily, though he usually hates to drink from a tap, especially one in a stranger's house. Henrietta gets a pack of cigarettes from the back of one of the high cabinets, and fishes around for something else up there until Clyde steps up behind her and gets it for her: a lighter.

"Thanks," she mutters, giving him a look that makes him step backward.

"You still smoke?" he says while she lights up.

"Not lately," she says. "Only when I'm stressed. I hope you didn't give them the impression that I had anything to do with whatever Damien's done. He lost interest in me years ago. Which isn't to say that he was ever really interested in anything but handouts."

"Why'd you give them to him, then?" Clyde asks.

"Because I was a dumb, lonely seventeen-year-old girl, maybe?"

"You had me."

"Ha! Right." Henrietta looks at Kyle, who is filling his glass again, pretending not to eavesdrop. "Did you and Becca have children?"

"No. I asked her about it at Thanksgiving. It didn't go well."

"Well, I'm sorry things didn't work out for you," Henrietta says. She turns over a teacup that was drying against the edge of the sink and taps ashes into it. "I'm sorry you didn't get to have children with your dream girl."

"She wasn't my dream girl."

"How about that drink?" Kenny asks, appearing in the kitchen doorway.

"Oh, I'm coming," Henrietta says irritably. "Really, you guys are wasting your time. I'm sorry about your sister, but you must know Damien can do whatever he wants."

"I must know?" Kenny scoffs. "How would I know that? I've never even met the guy."

"You have, too," Henrietta says. She gets a bottle down from another cabinet, then a stack of tumblers. "For God's sake, he turned you into a duckbill platypus. Though maybe that's why you don't remember him."

"Do what now?" Kenny says. Clyde laughs nervously. Kyle drinks more water, though he really wants whatever she's pouring from that bottle. It wouldn't do him much good; his headache is warping the edges of his vision and vomiting is imminent.

"You heard me," Henrietta says. "A duckbill platypus. He turned you into one almost directly after meeting you."

"Where was I when this happened?" Clyde asks.

"Oh, you were there." She sighs and goes to the kitchen window, staring out at the snow while her cigarette fumes between her fingers. "The trouble with Damien is that he can manipulate people's memories. He did it to me about a thousand times, until I figured out where all my money was disappearing to and cast a protective spell on myself. That was about the time he stopped coming around."

"Wait a minute," Kyle says, choking on the words. "Memories-"

"Is he a hypnotist or something?" Clyde asks.

"No," Henrietta says. She takes a drag, blows smoke. "He's the son of Satan." She turns from the sink, looking quite serious, and possibly a little bored. "A demon," she says while they all stare at her. "Well, half-demon, though I never could work out who his mother was supposed to be. She was definitely human, though. You can kill him if you need to, he's not immortal, but you'd have to find him first, and then there would be the matter of actually fighting him, which I can't imagine would be easy."

Kenny picks up Henrietta's pack of cigarette and eases one out, his hands shaking badly. Clyde stands there gaping at her. Kyle throws up onto the kitchen floor.

"Oh, good," Henrietta says, staring at the mess while Kyle doubles over. "I hope you all aren't expecting me to clean that up."

"Kyle!" Stan runs into the kitchen and wraps around him, helping him up and drawing him away from the pile of puke. Kyle is still reeling, and he wants badly to lie down somewhere, but is almost certain now that the next time he sleeps he's going to get pulled under the ice on that lake for real and for good.

"What's going on?" Wendy says as Stan hurries Kyle past her, down a narrow hallway lined with pictures of two blond children.

"He's sick," Stan says. "Something's happening."

Back in the kitchen, there's raised voices, and glass clinks against glass as somebody else helps themselves to a drink. Stan finds a hall bathroom and puts a light on: it's nightmarish, the shower curtain a chloronic plastic, mauve. There's a matching cover on the toilet seat, and Stan knocks it down into place, setting Kyle atop it.

"You're okay," he says, though he's trembling like he doesn't believe this. "You're alright, here." He wets a hand towel and wipes Kyle's mouth with it.

"This can't be real," Kyle says.

"What can't? Oh, God, you're feverish, I should have taken you to the hospital yesterday, shit."

"They wouldn't have been able to help me," Kyle says. He takes hold of Stan's sweater and looks into his eyes, trying to concentrate. "Stan. Stanley. Something horrible is happening. No, I think it's already happened."

"What do you mean?" Stan is wiping Kyle's face with the hand towel now, first with the damp section and then with the dry, trying in vain to mop up his sweat.

"That lake," Kyle says, his lungs constricting as he pronounces the words. "The one I dream about. I think, I. I think I might have died in it."

"Stop it," Stan says. "You're ill, you're delirious-"

"I'm serious, Stan. Something's unraveling, I can feel it. I'm not supposed to be here."

"So what are you saying, you're like Kenny and Christophe?" Stan asks, grabbing Kyle by his elbows. "You can't die, or you have and you've come back? What happened in the kitchen? Why are you talking like this all of a sudden?"

"No, I think I can die," Kyle says, because he can feel it happening, the heat under his skin transforming into cold, the way that freezing to death makes a person feel very hot before the end. "I think something stopped me from dying, once, when I should have done. Maybe you did, maybe that's why we were the ones who disappeared-"

"Are you remembering things?" Stan asks. "Kyle, look at me! Try to keep your eyes open. I'm going to take you to the hospital, alright?"

"Listen," Kyle says with some difficulty, trying to stay upright, though Stan is doing most of the work now. "Tell Kenny I'm sorry. I shouldn't have thought he was crazy, or lied about it. And you. Oh, Stan. I was wrong. There is a hell. I can feel it. I've got one foot in it already."

"Kyle, no, c'mon. You're just sick, you're sick, but you're gonna be okay, c'mon, here we go."

Stan carries him out of the bathroom, and Kyle gives in to the bottomless sleep that's been wanting to claim him since he first heard Karen say the name Damien, or maybe for even longer, since Christophe was taken from him. It feels good to close his eyes, and he hears soft, unkind voices encouraging him to drift off into a peaceful nothing. He manages to hang on to a shred of consciousness only because he can hear the pound of Stan's heartbeat, right under his ear, and, more distantly, the confused shouts of the others. Long lost things begin to return to him, the fist that was closed around his memories loosening as its owner determines that Kyle is too far gone to merit the effort now. He remembers smiling at his mother in the mirror while she cut his hair, his brother falling asleep against his arm during a long car trip, sadly donating his trick-or-treat candy to Kenny because of his diabetes, a miniature but still very fat Cartman laughing riotously, Butters in his blue turtleneck, Wendy holding Stan's hand.

He wants to cry out when the memories of Stan flood back in, but he can't, too deep down under the icy water now, the sound Stan's heartbeat fading into the distance. He remembers Stan, though, and it's like a burst of jubilation, a last euphoric release of whatever endorphins his rapidly expiring body had stored up: Stan in his hat with the red puff ball, in his sagging swim trunks, rumpled pajamas, his little football uniform, his church clothes. Kyle would sit on the front stoop of Stan's house on Sundays, waiting for him to get home from church, and Stan's mother would shout at them as they bolted off together, telling Stan he'd ruin his nice clothes, and why wasn't he minding her when she asked him to change, and what was his hurry when he'd have all day to play? Once, when they'd run far enough to lose the sound of her voice, both of them laughing madly, knowing they would get in trouble, not caring, Stan grabbed Kyle's hand and held it, pulling him along faster, faster, until Kyle thought they would leap into the goddamn sky and fly.

They were seven, maybe eight years old. They had their whole lives ahead of them. Kyle feels happy, remembering this, even knowing now that it was never true.


	19. Chapter 19

By the time the sun rises the snow has stopped falling, and the mess the blizzard left behind is crystallizing outside, the hard white of the landscape and the glow from the sky making everything feel real again. Kenny is seated at Wendy's kitchen table, across from Cartman, both of them clutching steaming mugs of coffee that they're not drinking from. Kenny is simultaneously exhausted and wired, his heart pounding and his eyelids heavy. In the last hour he's had three cups of coffee, and before that, at the hospital, he had something like ten. His hands are shaking, and he spreads them out on the table, staring at his jittery fingers while he listens to Wendy's half of the conversation from the next room. She's on the phone with Stan, speaking softly.

"That mustache looks awful on you, by the way," Kenny says to Cartman, because he's been meaning to bring it up all night, but there haven't exactly been a lot of opportunities for levity. He's only saying it now because Wendy's voice is trembling as the conversation with Stan winds down, and he's afraid to hear whatever news she'll have.

"Huh?" Cartman says, looking up from his coffee as if Kenny just woke him.

"That thing on your lip. It's awful."

"What?" Cartman touches his lip as if he can't imagine what Kenny is talking about, frowning when his fingers encounter the scraggly hairs there. "Oh. Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"I mean - fuck you, whatever." Cartman glowers at him and moans, rubbing at his eyes. "What time is it?"

"How the hell should I know? The sun's up, mostly. I guess it's about six or seven."

"I'm supposed to be on shift," Cartman says, his hand still over his eyes, elbows on the table. "I guess I should call and see if Clyde even bothered to show up, or if he's still fucking Elvira."

Last night, while the rest of them hurried Kyle to the hospital, Clyde stayed behind with Henrietta, because without him she would be alone and unsafe. So he said, and Kenny supposes that's part of the reason he wanted to stay, but he's pretty sure that Cartman is right. It infuriates him, the idea of someone getting laid in the midst of this crisis, though he can't blame Clyde. Kenny knows what he has to do now, and he's hesitating because of Wendy, because he's not ready to leave her.

"Well?" Kenny says when Wendy walks into the kitchen, her cell phone quiet in her palm. He can tell by her face that there's been no good news, and she doesn't seem shocked or upset enough to have heard anything worse than what they already know. "What'd he say?"

"Kyle is still in coma," she says. She goes to the coffee machine and picks up the pot, then just holds it. "They still don't know why."

"Fuck," Kenny says. He puts his hands over his face, returned to the moment when Stan rushed out of Henrietta's hall bathroom with Kyle limp in his arms, saying they had to go to the hospital, now. Kyle didn't move or make a sound during the trip there, but Stan talked to him the whole time, whispering that he would be alright, that everything would be fine, rocking him and kissing his forehead. When they finally left the hospital an hour ago, Stan was hollow and quiet, trying to pretend that he still believes what he said to Kyle in the car, that everything will be alright. Kenny hated to leave him, but Stan had stopped registering the presence of other people hours ago, just staring into space in the waiting room, vacant and drained.

"Do you want to take a shower or something?" Wendy asks Kenny, dragging her hand through his hair when she walks behind him. He shakes his head, and she sits down beside him, her hand on his leg. He knows he has to tell her soon. He doesn't want to do this without telling her.

"So what the fuck do we do now?" Cartman asks. "Henrietta's blaming this on the devil - fine, she's nuts, we always knew that. I still think it's Craig, but I've got officers at his house and there's nobody there. What now? Huh? We're wasting time!" He punches the table, but it's a weak gesture, communicating a sense of defeat more than anything else. "Wendy? Ideas?"

"I don't know," she says. "I keep thinking of Tweek. God, he doesn't deserve this. He was finally going to have a real life, you know, after we got divorced? Everything was going to be better for him, I think he really believed that, and everything was better, already, but now -"

"Stop talking about like they're already - like - like we're too late!" Cartman says. "This is bullcrap! We're going to find Craig, and they're going to be fine, he probably just wants ransom money or something-"

"Craig is a multimillionaire," Kenny snaps, though he can hardly blame Cartman for clinging to delusions. "I doubt he's interested in ransom money. And I don't think he's behind this, anyway. It's that Damien person. I'm sure of it now."

"Why, because of Henrietta's ravings?" Wendy says. "Kenny, I hate to say it, but Cartman is right. The son of the devil? Did she expect us to believe that? Does _she_ actually believe that? I can't believe Clyde stayed with her, she's probably protecting this Damien asshole, helping him hide out somewhere-"

"Look," Kenny says. He's been debating whether or not to say this in front of Cartman, but he thinks he'll have to, if for nothing else then so Wendy won't have to bear it alone. "I actually, ah. I think I know what has to be done."

"Well then fucking tell us!" Cartman says. "Don't just sit there brooding like an asshole!"

"It's not going to be easy to explain," Kenny says, glaring at him. He softens his expression before sliding his gaze to Wendy. "But you guys are just going to have to trust me."

"What, Kenny?" Wendy says. She squeezes his leg. He takes a deep breath, and before he can let it out, someone is pounding on the front door.

"Jesus, what now," Cartman grumbles. He stands, taking his gun from its holster.

"You're not answering my door with a fucking gun in your hands!" Wendy says, jumping up. "It could be Tweek!"

Cartman scoffs. "What, you confiscated his key already?"

The knocking is frantic and loud, and Kenny's already elevated heart rate spikes. He gets up and follows them to the door. Cartman is still holding the gun, and the way things have been going, Kenny doesn't think it's such a bad idea. He takes Wendy's shoulder and pulls her back from the door.

"Let me," he says. She makes a face, but allows him to step in front of her and unbolt the lock. While he does, Cartman looks out the window beside the door.

"Mother_fucker_," he says, gritting his teeth, and Kenny knows who it will be before he checks the peep hole to confirm. It's Craig Tucker, wearing his reaper-like black overcoat, looking murderous.

Kenny opens the door, feeling as if he's releasing several dangerous animals. He thinks he's figured out what's happening and no longer suspects Craig's involvement, but Cartman is ready to kill him, and Kenny is tempted to allow it.

"Testaburger," Craig says, scowling at Wendy. "What the hell have you done to my-"

That's all Craig can get out before Cartman has grabs him, yanks him into the house and slams him against the wall, snarling. Craig makes an undignified sputtering sound and struggles mightily, going still when Cartman lifts his gun and puts it to his temple.

"Dude!" Kenny shouts.

"Cartman!" Wendy says. "Stop!"

"What the fuck is this?" Craig asks, panting. "What the hell are you doing, you fucking lunatic?"

"You son of a bitch," Cartman says, not backing down. "You thought you could get away with it. In my town. In my _fucking_ town."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Craig asks. He keeps glancing nervously at the gun, flinching. "I just got back from Hong Kong to my housekeeper calling me sobbing because someone trashed my fucking house, and she says the police are looking for me - what the hell is this?" Craig asks, looking at Wendy. "Where's Tweek?"

"Where's _Tweek_?" Cartman says. He shoves Craig's shoulder with his gun-free hand. "Where the fuck is Butters? Huh, asshole?"

"Butters?" Craig huffs. "How should I know? Isn't he yours to keep track of?"

"Craig, I swear to God, I am going to fucking _kill__you_ right now if you don't tell me where he is!"

"Why the hell do you think I'd know?" Craig shouts. He looks over Cartman's shoulder. "Testaburger! McCormick! Don't just stand there! Get this maniac off of me!"

"Let him go, Cartman," Wendy says. "Don't you at least want to find out if he was really in Hong Kong before you do anything crazy?"

"I don't care if the motherfucker's been in Thailand fucking rent boys for the past two weeks! He's got something to do with this, Wendy!"

"Something to do with what?" Craig asks. His voice is actually shaking, which is alarming, because in twenty-three years Kenny has never heard the barest hint of emotion creep into his tone. "What's going on? Wendy, where is Tweek?"

"We don't know," Wendy says. "Something happened to him, and Butters, and Kenny's sister."

"Something like what?" Craig glowers at Cartman. "What did you do?"

"_Me_?"

"Yes, you! You're a menace, and I can't believe you've been allowed to run amok in this town for as long as you have-"

"Oh, you are fucking dead," Cartman says, shaking his head. "So fucking dead, Craig, but your last words are gonna be the location of Butters, even if I have to spend the next three days torturing it out of you-"

"Fuck Butters, what's happened to Tweek?" Craig asks, shouting. "Somebody had better start explaining-"

"Yeah, you should, Craig, you explain what the hell you did to them-"

"Both of you shut the fuck up!" Kenny says, and, somewhat surprisingly, this works. Cartman turns to frown at him and Craig goes silent. "Cartman, put the gun away. It's not helping. He doesn't know anything."

"How the hell would you know, Kenny?"

"Because I know what's going on," Kenny says. "I know where my sister and those guys are."

He can feel the air in the room change, and he's afraid to turn toward Wendy, because she might never again look at him the way she has been for the past week, like he's not a burden or a tragedy but her partner who she'd trust with her life. Cartman releases Craig and turns toward Kenny, stopping just short of pointing the gun at him.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Cartman asks.

"Where are they?" Wendy asks, and he has has to look at her when he says this, so he does. She's worried but still hopeful, still looking at him like she believes in him, waiting for him to explain.

"They're in hell," Kenny says. "Literally. But I don't think they're dead."

"Is this some kind of trick you people are trying to play on me?" Craig asks, shouting. "Trying to scare me out of running for mayor? Well, it won't work. Where is Tweek? Is he in on this? Is he here? Tweek!" Craig moves toward the stairs. "Tweek, you'd better get down here if you can hear me!"

Kenny hears Craig as if from a distance, watching the hope in Wendy's eyes dim and die out as she studies his face and realizes that he's serious. He looks away from her, to Cartman.

"I know it sounds crazy," Kenny says. "But if you don't believe me, Butters could die. Karen, too, and Tweek."

"If we don't believe _what_?" Cartman says, sputtering. "Henrietta's bullcrap? That stuff about the son of Satan?"

"Yes," Kenny says. "The devil is real. I've been to hell and I've met him."

"Why would you say that?" Wendy asks, already crying a little. "Kenny - why-"

"We've got one chance of getting those three back," Kenny says, trying to keep his voice firm. "I'll do what I can, but Cartman, Craig, I'm going to need your help. Let's go into the kitchen."

He goes, pretending to feel confident that at least one of them will follow.

None of them does. Kenny reaches the dining room table and sits down, shaking. Out in the foyer they're all talking, voices low, though Cartman's and Craig's rise a bit as they start to bicker with each other. Eventually they go quiet, and Kenny has to wonder if they've all reached the same conclusion: Kenny is crazy and can be of no help to them now. When he hears footsteps he turns, hoping it will be Wendy, even if she's only come to stroke his hair the way she did when he was too high to remember where he was. It's not Wendy, it's Craig.

He's still in his overcoat, and it's buttoned all the way up his chin, making him into a neat column of black, his skin a perfect pale contrast between the coat and his dark hair, except for the flush across his cheeks that must be some symptom of his rage. He comes to Kenny, takes a chair and sits down beside him, unblinking.

"Tell me," Craig says, leaning closer. "Did you kill Tweek?"

Kenny huffs. "Is that what you three have decided? That's what we think happened now, I killed them all?"

"It occurred to me," Craig says. There's something tight in his voice, a barely restrained avalanche of frustration. "They seem to think it's impossible, but I don't know what you're capable of. So tell me. Did you kill him?"

"No," Kenny says, and he lets Craig study him after he's said so, his gray eyes boring into Kenny's. Craig nods once.

"Alright," he says. "Then he's in hell, you say?"

"Yes."

Craig sits back and looks away from Kenny, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together as if he's feeling some invisible fabric. He sighs.

"So how do I get there?" Craig asks.

"Huh?"

"To hell. If that's where Tweek is, I'm going there to retrieve him. So tell me how to get there."

"Alright," Kenny says, after studying Craig's eyes and finding only angry sincerity there. "Get Wendy and Cartman in here. They should hear this, too."

"They think you've lost your mind. She's weeping for you."

"Well." Kenny's heart does a thing, a pratfall. "You don't think I'm nuts?"

Craig shrugs. "They said Tweek disappeared. I want him back. If you say you know how to get him, I'm listening."

"This is unlike you," Kenny says.

"You don't know me," Craig says. "And you don't know what he is to me." Craig clears his throat and turns toward the hallway that leads back to the foyer. "Testaburger!" he shouts. "Cartman! Get in here."

Kenny hates the thought of Cartman consoling Wendy, or barking under his breath that this proves he was right about Kenny all along. When they come into the kitchen, Cartman is glowering and Wendy is sniffling, avoiding Kenny's eyes.

"I'll just," she says, her hands shaking so badly that Kenny can see it from across the room. "I'll just make us some more coffee."

"Why'd you call us?" Cartman asks, sitting down beside Craig. "Has this asshole miraculously started making sense or something?"

"Not really," Craig says. "But if they've vanished, and if we have no leads, I think we have to listen to him."

"Listen to what?" Cartman says. "What the fuck is your plan to defeat the devil, huh, Kenny? Go ahead and tell us, since Craig's in the mood to humor you."

"I'll have to die," Kenny says. "To kill myself."

Behind them, glass shatters, and they turn to see Wendy crouching over the broken coffee pot, sobbing.

"Shit," she cries, picking up pieces of glass. "This was - it belonged to Tweek's parents, oh, God-"

"Just listen to me before you get upset," Kenny says. He goes to Wendy, afraid that she'll hit him when he touches her, but she lets him draw her up to the floor and hug her to his chest, even buries her face there to cry.

"I don't have time for your breakdown, Testaburger," Craig says. "Fine, Kenny, you'll have to kill yourself. I'm down for that."

"I'm down for that anyway," Cartman mutters. "'Bout time, Jesus."

"Do you remember that day at the clinic?" Kenny asks, ignoring them. He takes Wendy's face in his hands and tips it up toward his. "Remember, when you and Butters took me to get tested? You were both so worried, and you should have been, because there was no way I'd be clean after all that."

"Kenny-" she says, but that's all she can get out, her hands closing into fists around his shirt.

"There was no way, Wendy," Kenny says. "But we heard it from the doctor, I was totally clean, not even fucking crabs or something."

"Can we stop talking about Kenny's STDs and get back to the fact that someone kidnapped Butters?" Cartman shouts.

"But he doesn't-" Wendy says. She sniffles, frowning slightly, peering up at Kenny. "He didn't - he doesn't - I thought, ah. I thought maybe you'd been careful-"

"_Wendy_. I didn't even know where I was half the time. I wasn't being careful, and the people I was hanging around with weren't being careful, and you knew that."

"So how?" She shakes her head. "What are you saying?"

"I died," Kenny says. "This body? It never went through any of that. I died probably - Jesus, fifty times that year. You saw it happen at least twice. I've died in your arms, Wendy, you just don't remember."

"Why are you doing this?" She tears herself out of his grip, sobbing again. "What's happening, oh, Jesus Christ, what's happened to you-"

"I don't know what I am," Kenny says. "But it's the reason I remembered Stan and Kyle when no one else could. I was dead when they were taken, and when I came back, nobody knew what I was talking about when I asked where they were."

"But you were a little boy," Wendy says. She's got her back to Kenny, her hands braced against the refrigerator. "That was when we were kids-"

"It's always happened to me, I've died hundreds of times, and then I wake up back in my bed at my parents' house-"

"Alright," Cartman says. He stands from the table. "I've heard enough. I'm going back to the station."

"To do what?" Kenny asks. "How are you going to find them? What's your plan, Cartman? You _know_ something's happened that we can't explain. Can't you feel it? Butters is in trouble, and I'm telling you I know how to help him."

"So kill yourself, great!" Cartman says. He throws his gun on the table. "There, be my guest! At least it will shut you up."

"Stop it!" Wendy says. She goes for the gun, but Cartman snatches it back before she can reach it. "You're not killing yourself!" she says to Kenny, whirling on him. "I'll have Cartman lock you up before I let you do that!"

"What would killing yourself accomplish?" Craig asks. "You're saying you could go to hell and bring them back with you when you come back to life?"

"Craig, what the fuck!" Cartman shouts. "Don't encourage him!"

"I couldn't bring them back, no," Kenny says. "I'll be dead, I won't be able to do anything, you know, I won't have a body. But you two - if I could just get some help, I think maybe I could get you and Cartman there, to where they are, and you could try to bring them back."

"How exactly could we get into hell and back?" Craig asks. "Is there some kind of curtain you'll be holding for us while you're dead?"

"No," Kenny says. "I'm not even sure it's possible. It's a favor I'd have to ask."

"From who?" Wendy asks. She's looking at him with disgust, and he has to look away before he can answer.

"Um, from Satan," Kenny says. "He's kind of a friend."

"Can I blow this motherfucker away yet?" Cartman shouts. "He's fucking begging for it, literally."

"Wendy, look," Kenny says. He pulls up the sleeves on his sweater and turns his arms over, thrusting them out toward her. "Do you remember all the track marks? The scars? How you and Butters would find me beaten up, so bad I couldn't move?"

"I can't, I can't," Wendy sobs, becoming hysterical. She covers her eyes with her hands, but Kenny grabs them and pulls them away.

"Look, Wendy!" he says. "Look at my arms. Haven't you wondered why I don't have a single fucking scar? Do you remember how chewed up I would be, those nights - you must remember some of it, the cuts and the marks from the needles, the time I'd been beat up and my fucking bone was poking through my skin? You've - you know - this week - you've seen most of me, you've had your hands all over me. Have you found a single scar? Huh? Do you see one now?"

"What are you saying, what are you saying?" she asks, trying to jerk out of his grip.

"I'm saying I've died and I've come back," he says. "Many times, all my life. I don't know what I am, but I know that if we try this, we lose nothing, except that you won't remember this conversation, because you won't remember that I died."

Wendy shakes her head, dissolving into wordless sobs. She lets Kenny hold her, which is a good sign. His heart is slamming in his chest. He turns to Cartman and Craig. Cartman is still standing, though he looks like he's going to drop at any moment, worn down to nothing by the events of the last fifteen hours or so. Craig is seated, thoughtful.

"So what you're saying," Craig says. "Is that after you die, if we're approached by Satan, we should go with him."

Wendy whimpers against Kenny's chest and he pets her hair, kisses her head.

"I don't think it will work that way," Kenny says. "But I guess it's possible. He can't just come to earth whenever he wants. There are rules. His son must have gotten around that somehow, maybe because he's half human, but I'm betting that, well. The devil might not know what's going on. If he does, and he's part of this, obviously we're fucked. If he doesn't, and I can fill him in, hey. Maybe we can get my sister and our friends back."

"So, what, you're going to ask him to teleport us to hell or something?" Craig says. "And give us a way to get back out?"

"I really think it's our only option," Kenny says. "Maybe he could put a stop to the whole thing himself and boot those guys back to earth, but I kind of doubt that he's going to go along with that. I think he's kind of fond of me, but he probably wouldn't side with me over his son. I've only really talked with him a few times."

"Let me guess, he's big and red with horns," Cartman says.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"I need to be alone for a minute," Wendy says, pulling away from Kenny's chest.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Kenny says. "What happened to Kyle - it's probably because Damien has some kind of protection in place, like us finding out about him set off a kind of alarm. God only knows what he's capable of, and nobody should go wandering off alone right now."

"If I have to listen to anymore of this, I'm going to lose my shit, Kenny," she says, narrowing her eyes at him.

"I'm with you there," Cartman says.

"Cartman, Wendy - you guys don't even have to do anything, just-"

"We don't have to do anything but let you kill yourself!" Wendy shouts.

"Which I actually have no problem with," Cartman says, raising his hand.

"What are we supposed to do with your body after you die?" Craig asks, making a face, as if contemplating this is rather distasteful.

"He's not dying!" Wendy says. "Kenny, I will tie you up if I have to."

"Wendy, look at me," Kenny says. "Really look at me, and stop trying to figure out how this could work - do you remember that day at the garage? When I asked you to trust me about Stan and Kyle?"

"This is different," she says. "This is insane."

"How is it any more or less insane than a whole town forgetting two boys who grew up here? And me remembering? Look, I mean - do you believe in God?"

"Oh, Christ, I don't know!" she says with a groan, turning away from him. "I guess I want to. But I don't believe that people can come back from the dead."

"Jesus did," Craig says. "Allegedly."

Cartman scoffs. "Kenny is not Jesus," he says.

"What can I do to make you believe me?" Kenny asks. He takes Wendy by the shoulders and turns her back around, gently.

"Nothing," she says. "I can't believe this. I won't."

"Well, then. What can I do to make you trust me? To just have faith in me? Because I would not abandon you, Wendy. I wouldn't do this if I didn't know that I'll be able to come back."

"How about us?" Cartman says. "What if you send us to hell and leave us there?"

"Oh, so now you believe in hell?" Kenny asks.

"I don't fucking know!" Cartman says, and for a moment he actually sounds like he'll let his voice break. "I just, ah." He huffs. "I have to save Butters. You guys don't understand."

"I understand," Craig says. He gets up from his chair. "Look, we won't let Testaburger tie you up. If she's not on board, I'll tie _her_ up if I have to. But I'm ready to do this. Tweek – he." Craig closes his eyes for a moment, draws in a deep but silent breath, and opens his eyes as he lets it out. "He can't be handling this well. To put it mildly. I'm not leaving him in danger for any longer than I have to. Let's do this."

"Craig, what is _wrong_ with you?" Wendy says. "And Cartman - Eric - you, you're really going to let Kenny kill himself? He was your friend, don't you remember, when you were little-"

"I don't know what else to do!" Cartman says, shouting. "Do you? Wendy? What do you want to do, huh? 'Cause I'm out of ideas."

"Please, just let me do this," Kenny says, turning Wendy's chin so that she's facing him again. "For my sister, and your husband, and for Butters, and for Kyle and Stan. Kyle isn't going to get better if I don't do something about this. Wendy, he was fine one minute, and in a coma as soon as Henrietta started explaining about Damien. You have to know that she was right. Some part of you has to believe me."

Wendy is still crying silently now, tears sliding down to her jaw and clinging there for a moment before dropping onto her sweater. She searches Kenny's eyes, and he thinks of that day in the garage, when everything was riding on whether or not she believed him.

"How are you so sure you'd end up in hell?" she asks. She sniffles indignantly and rubs her hand across one cheek, then the other. "What if this noble sacrifice sends you to heaven?"

"I almost never go to heaven," Kenny says. "But-"

"What's heaven like?" Craig asks. Cartman groans.

"Um, I actually prefer hell," Kenny says, muttering.

"You would," Cartman says.

"You'd have to do some kind of sin first," Wendy says. She looks angry, and she's still shaking badly.

"I guess it couldn't hurt," Kenny says.

"Yeah, like, um, fornicating with an adulteress," Wendy says. She slides out of his grip, walking backward toward the hallway. "So? You know. We should."

"Ugh, sick," Cartman says.

"She's just trying to trick you!" Craig says, leaping out of his chair. "So she can tie you up!"

"Sick!" Cartman says again.

"I'm not," Wendy says, her eyes still locked on Kenny's. He wasn't prepared for this, for this sudden resignation or what she's proposing. They haven't had sex yet, have just been fooling around in the dark at his apartment like teenagers, their hands pushed up under each other's clothes.

"Wendy-" Kenny says.

"What? You don't want to?"

"This is stupid," Craig says. "We don't have time for your farewell fuck."

"Oh, Craig, what the hell do you know about any of it?" Wendy says, shouting at him.

"I know Tweek's in trouble!" he says, coloring again. "And I care about him more than you do. I always have."

"Bullshit!" She's livid, rushing back into the kitchen like she's going to hit him. Craig doesn't flinch. "So where were you when his parents died? Huh? How come it was me sitting up with him at night when he was sobbing-"

"Because you needed that!" Craig shouts. "Like I did! Don't act like you did it for him - please. I know what it's like, getting off on being there for him when he's falling apart. That's why I didn't do it, because I was disgusted with myself. His parents had died, and I was - I wasn't going to pet him like I did when he was afraid of goddamn underwear gnomes when we were kids."

"Oh, you're so full of crap! You couldn't handle it-"

"Maybe I couldn't, but at least I wasn't pretending he was McCormick when I fucked him!"

"Can we get back to talking about killing Kenny?" Cartman says, shouting over them. "I don't really give a crap about this other shit, seriously."

"I need to talk to Wendy alone," Kenny says.

"Oh, Christ, fine," Craig says, growling and turning away from them. "Just make it quick, yeah? And don't make too much noise. Heterosexual humping makes me sick to my stomach."

"Why were you going along with the story about Karen's pregnancy?" Wendy asks. "Were you really paying her just to keep her from telling me about you and Tweek?"

"He was hysterical at the thought of hurting you," Craig says. He sniffs and pushes his slightly disordered hair off his forehead. "You're the only family he has left. He didn't want to disappoint you."

"I don't understand you," Wendy says. "You could have been his family. He would have left me for you."

"And he will, once I retrieve him," Craig says. He puts his shoulders back and narrows his eyes at her. "Maybe I was a coward before, but I'm the one willing to go to hell for him now."

"Come on," Kenny says when that leaves Wendy at a loss, her gaze foggy and aimless. "Let's go upstairs for a minute. To talk."

It's the first time Kenny has been to the second floor of Wendy's house. The second floor has a more informal vibe, and he feels like he's backstage at a slickly produced play, smelling her shampoo when they pass the hall bathroom. She walks into what must be the master bedroom, holds the door open, and closes it when he's walked inside.

"Nice," he says, stupidly, not sure what else he can say at this point. There's a giant bed in the center of the room, with four wooden posts and unmade, cranberry-colored sheets, a paisley comforter half hanging off of the mattress. Her clothes are draped around the room in various places: on a chair near the bed, on a settee under the windows, over a tall dresser. Wendy sits on the bed and looks at the windows, her hands hanging between her knees. Outside, the snow is bright but the sky is dull, the combination lighting the room with a kind of dim brilliance that makes Kenny feel nervous. He wishes the sun would go down, though he doesn't plan on living long enough to see it happen.

"So," he says when Wendy just sits there looking like she's daydreaming about sleep. "What are you thinking?"

"I was just thinking about how familiar this feels," she says, still not looking at him. He sits beside her on the bed and reaches over to take one of her hands. She lets him have it, limply.

"Familiar?" he says. His heart is slamming, even though none of this matters. He'll die; she'll forget. She might get mad at him for abandoning her during this ordeal, but if they manage to solve things, maybe everyone will remember it all: Stan and Kyle, South Park the way it was, every one of his deaths. He doesn't really want that last thing. He's embarrassed by most of his deaths, and wouldn't want Wendy to feel guilty for forgetting them.

"Yeah, it's just like back then," Wendy says. She takes a deep breath and turns to him. "I loved you so much, and I hated you, too. You were in this other world, this place where you could shut me out, and you were always laughing like somebody in your head was telling you a joke that I couldn't hear, or wouldn't get-"

"It's not like then." Kenny presses her hand between both of his. "This is different. Wendy, things have changed-"

"Oh, shut up," she says, her voice shaking. She doesn't cry, doesn't even get angry, just touches his cheek. "Here," she says, reaching down to tug at the hem of his sweater. "Let me see something."

She pulls him up from the bed as she takes his sweater off, and his undershirt comes off along with it. It's cold in the room and he wants her to hold him, to make him warm, but she's giving him a rather clinical examination, frowning as she inspects his arms.

"There would have to be scars," she says, muttering.

"See?" he says, hope injected into his bloodstream like caffeine. She shakes her head, and he shivers as her fingers skim over his chest.

"You must have some sort of disorder," she says. "So that - so that your skin can't scar-"

"And it makes my ass resistant to STDs, too?" Kenny says. He regrets it when she look up at him, furious.

"Don't talk like that," she says. "You don't know - I would sit in my car after school, in my parents' driveway and just cry my fucking eyes out over you. Over what had been done to you, what you were putting yourself through for drugs-"

"It wasn't even the drugs I wanted," Kenny says, though in the strictest sense that's not true. "I wanted to be snuffed out. But I couldn't. No matter how many times I died with my head in a toilet, I'd be back with a new body, squeaky clean."

"Why?" Wendy asks. Her hands are resting at the waistline of his jeans, fingers twitching.

"I don't know," Kenny says. "Maybe for this, for right now, for today. Maybe I can finally fucking do something for all of you instead of just disappearing and letting you down."

"You want to kill yourself," Wendy says, pronouncing this slowly.

"I swear on everything we have that I'll come back," he says. He takes her shoulders, and he's relieved when she doesn't flinch, because he knows he's become something wretched again, to her. "I swear on my sister's life, on her baby's life, on Butters' life, Tweek's, Kyle's. I would die for them, but I won't even have to do that, not the way a normal person would."

Wendy studies his face. She looks like she's aged two years in the past twenty-four hours, but it's not unattractive. His cock twitches when she unbuttons his fly.

"I want to come with you," she says.

"No," he says. "That's impossible. You wouldn't-"

"Everything's just crumbling around me." She's taking off his jeans as she says so, easing them down over his ass. "This week has gone by so fast. Has it even been a week? I've been lying awake at night like an idiot, like a girl in high school, thinking about the next time I'll be able to kiss you. You keep saying you don't know what you are. I know what you are." She slides her hands into his boxer shorts and cups his ass, leaning up to put her mouth against his. "You're the little boy I fell in love with. As soon as you took that hood down and showed me your face. You're him, you're still him. I feel like I'm the only one who remembers that."

He kisses her so that he won't lose his composure, and because he wants to, because her lips are soft and her mouth is warm. His pants are pooled around his ankles, and then his boxers are, too. He steps out of them, walking backward toward the bed, and when his ass hits the mattress he tries to pull her there with him. She wiggles free, but only so she can undress in front of the glow of the window, which looks like a movie screen that's waiting for a film reel. Kenny takes off his socks. He's more afraid of this than dying, but that's not going to stop him. He doesn't want to go back to hell before he's been inside her.

"You're shivering," she says when she comes to him, naked. He nods and lets her guide him onto the bed, scooting over to give her room to join him. She gets the comforter and pulls it up over them, and it's as cool as the air in the room against their skin. They cling to each other for warmth beneath it, kissing, her leg sliding up between his, until he can rub himself against her thigh.

"Want to hear something hilarious?" she asks while he's kissing her neck, stroking the dip between her shoulder blades with his thumb.

"Okay." He lifts his face to hers.

"I went back on the pill," she says. "I thought it would be, like. A gesture of faith or something. Like this was going to last."

"This is going to last. I'm going to fix it, Wendy. I swear."

"No, don't." She touches his cheek, her fingers shaking. "Don't promise me anything. I just meant, um. We could do it without a condom. Because I do know you're clean. I know you are."

"I waited for you," he says, starting to lose his composure anyway, despite the fact that he's still kind of kissing her, saying this while his lips move over hers.

"I know you did," she says. "I'm sorry I didn't. I'm so sorry, about Tweek-"

"No, don't, Jesus - what, you were going to marry me?"

"I wanted to, you asshole," she says, and they're both sort of crying now, sniffling, but they kiss until their lips stop trembling, and he rolls her onto her back.

"I would have been a shitty husband," Kenny says, propped up over her on his elbows. "Isn't that what you're getting from all this? That you'd have had to put up with _this_ for the past eight years?"

"Frankly?" she says, arching up against him so that he can feel her slickness against his cock. "I could have done with more of _this_ over the past eight years."

Kenny is going to crack some joke about how she could have come by the garage anytime to get serviced, that she wouldn't have even had to bring him lunch, but it's stupid, because he was traumatized and impotent. It just doesn't feel true now, or anyway it feels very far away, long ago. He gets up onto his knees so that he can reach down between her legs, and she opens her mouth but doesn't make any sound, eyelids lowering. This is what they've been doing for the past week: his hand between her legs, hers around his cock, the shuffling of their half-clothed bodies rubbing together enough to get them both off fast and hard. He kisses her, and she sighs into his mouth.

"I won't let you shoot yourself," she says.

"Oh," he says. "Well-"

"I've got pills," she says. "From my dad's office. I used to take them for - whatever, for self-medicating my unhappiness. My dad found out I was taking them and got really angry, so I did some research. Apparently they're a favorite of people who are planning to kill themselves. Five pills on a full stomach - there are guides online, websites that tell you how to do it painlessly. Isn't that terrible?"

Her voice is shaking, but just a little. He rubs his fingers over her neck, down into the hollow of her throat.

"I'd have to trust you," he says. "That you're not just trying to knock me out."

"Why would I do that?" Her tone is flat, but she's not really admitting to anything, or threatening him.

"You'd only do that if you didn't trust me," he says. "If you didn't believe me when I tell you this our last chance to save them. All of them, not just the three who were taken. If Kyle is in a coma, Stan's as good as gone. If Butters and Tweek don't come back, well, fuck, I don't know about Cartman and Craig, but they seem pretty lost. And me. This guy has my sister, Wendy. If I can't protect her then what the hell good am I?"

She's quiet for awhile, taking deep breaths, playing with his hair. She shakes her head.

"So," she says. "We've got to trust each other, then."

"I do trust you," he says. "I'll take whatever pills you give me." He waits, watching her eyes. "Do you trust me? I can't promise that I can fix things, you're right, but do you believe me when I say I'll come back to you?"

Wendy makes a mournful sound and shakes her head, but she's not telling him no, not yet.

"Ask me again when you're inside me," she says, and she pulls him down to her.

He doesn't ask; they don't say anything, and they're quiet, fluid under the comforter. Kenny kisses her until his lips feel bruised, and he's spinning inside his own head, faster and faster, close to being flung out into space. He'd somehow managed to forget until now that this was never about his dick. He couldn't get hard all those years because his heart wasn't in it. His heart was with her, and he can feel it soldiering on while he's inside her, not reclaimed but still his, the same one he gave her. It's been safe inside her all this time.

"Are you okay?" she asks when they're through, Kenny tucked against her with his head under her chin, her fingers in his hair.

"Yeah," he says, huffing. "Yeah, I'm. Good."

She scoots down to press her face to his, smiling, her cheeks still flushed. She looks young again, maybe even younger than she looked in high school. He imagines falling in love with her in a world where Stan and Kyle had never gone, getting tutored after school and letting her give him hell when he stopped paying attention and just stared at her mouth while she talked about protons or solving for x or the Civil War. He can't imagine any universe where he'd be good enough to marry her.

"Are you hungry?" she asks when his stomach makes a pained, gurgling sound, the coffee churning around uncomfortably inside him.

"I guess so," he says. "You said. Those pills – you'd need a full stomach?"

The smile drains from her eyes even before the corners of her lips turn down. She nods and sits up, pushing her messy hair back off her shoulders.

"Yeah, um, or you'd just throw them up."

"Hey." He sits up beside her and puts his chin on her shoulder. "Technically, you know, you just took my virginity. Be nice to me. I'm fragile right now."

He's joking, but not really, and she knows it. She rubs her cheek against his and sighs.

"I love you so much," she says, lacing her fingers through his when he reaches for her hand. "And you're telling me the only way I can prove that is to help you kill yourself."

"Think of Butters and Tweek," Kenny says. "Think of Karen, and Kyle. We can do this for them. Me and you. I don't think there's anyone else in town strong enough to see me through this. Only you."

"Cartman would gladly blow you away," Wendy says, muttering. Kenny snorts.

"He's all talk. And I don't want to be alone. Will you sit with me? Like you used to do? Just me and you, up here in the bed?"

"Oh, Kenny, _Jesus_." She seems to want to sob, but all that comes out is a tired jerk of her shoulders and a wince. "Why do I -" She looks at him like he's already gone. "Why do I feel like I always knew you'd ask me to just sit back and let you kill yourself?"

"Probably because I asked you that about a thousand times when we were kids," he says. "But I swear to God, this is different."

"God, well." She closes her eyes again. "You told them you'd been to heaven."

"It's not as exciting as it sounds," Kenny says, afraid that he's losing her again. "Not even the fucking devil. All of it's just another version of what we've always known, like South Park was after Stan and Kyle left. To you guys it was normal, and to me it was fucking alien, another world."

"Go eat something," she says, waving her hand toward the door. "There's Easy Mac and, um, some spaghetti. Just look in the pantry. It won't be the best last meal, but. You should find plenty of options."

"Will you come with me?" he asks, holding her wrist. She shakes her head and leans down to the pillows.

"I need to be alone for awhile," she says.

"Wendy-"

"I won't disappear," she says, giving him a steely look. "Not me. I was never the one who disappeared, Kenny. I'm not going to start now."

He dresses and leaves her, not sure if she's angry with him or just disappointed by her own resignation. There's water running in the hall bathroom. Kenny closes Wendy's bedroom door and walks forward to investigate. The bathroom door is ajar, and he pushes it all the way open. Cartman is inside, at the sink, shaving. He gives Kenny a reproachful look.

"What?" he snaps when Kenny stands there, staring.

"Nothing, ah. What are you doing?"

"What the fuck does it look like I'm doing?" Cartman taps the razor against the sink and rinses it off.

"Yeah, but." Kenny feels like he's dreaming, now more than ever, and it's almost funny. "Why?"

"Why?" Cartman sputters and grabs a hand towel, rubbing it across his freshly shaved cheeks. "Because, dickweed, if I'm gonna see Butters. You know. He doesn't like it when, ah. When I'm not." Cartman flushes, glowering at his reflection while Kenny continues to stare.

"You really love him?" Kenny says, more stunned by this than anything that's happened in the past month. Cartman scoffs and throws the towel down.

"I'm going to hell for him, aren't I?"

"You believe me, then?" Kenny wants to pull Wendy out here, to tell her that if Cartman can make this leap of faith, she should, too. Cartman looks angry, sad, then just feral, snarling and dragging his hands through his unwashed hair.

"I don't fucking know!" he says, just short of shouting. "If you're wrong, whatever, you kill yourself and I skip the funeral. If you're right, fuck. I'll go to hell for him. I'll go fucking anywhere."

Flustered, Cartman pushes past Kenny and walks down the stairs, grumbling to himself under his breath. Kenny follows, his footsteps slow and plodding. He's never been afraid to die before. It's not the pain he's afraid of, or the fact that he's going to the other side to try to strike a deal with the devil. It's Wendy; it's the idea of her alone in this house after he's gone, if he's able to pull Cartman and Craig through with him. It will be so quiet while she waits here, so still.

His last meal is Easy Mac straight from the sauce pan, washed down with whiskey, chased with Dr. Pepper. He makes enough Easy Mac for Cartman to have some, too. Craig refuses when they offer him a bowl, but he joins them in drinking whiskey.

"What will happen, then?" Craig asks, twirling his drink in his palm as if he's drinking something fine from a sifter, not cheap whiskey from a juice glass. "When we're given the opportunity to go to hell?"

"If it works, I think you'll just blink and get sucked out of the air," Kenny says. "Like the others were."

"Butters didn't scream?" Cartman says, staring down at his Easy Mac, his fork trembling over the bowl.

"I told you," Kenny says. "He didn't."

There's a long pause, Kenny and Cartman's forks clicking against the sauce pan and bowl, respectively, the Easy Mac audibly rubbery between their teeth.

"Did Tweek?" Craig finally asks. "Scream, I mean? Did he-"

"He cursed," Kenny says. "But he didn't scream. They were both brave, I think. They probably didn't want to scare Karen."

Nobody speaks for the remainder of Kenny's last meal. When he's through, he goes to the sink and fills the sauce pan with water, not wanting Wendy to have to deal with crusty artificial cheese when she comes downstairs to find the kitchen empty. He turns from the sink and stares at Cartman and Craig until both of them look up at him.

"I think even a sinner can pass through hell unharmed if his intentions are pure," Kenny says. He looks down at his socks and curls his hands into fists at his sides. "And I wouldn't send even my worst enemies there if I didn't think they'd be able to get back out again. So. Take that for what you will. I guess."

He's going to leave without looking at them again, but he can't help himself. They both look scared, and they quickly try to conceal this when they see that he's paying attention.

"See you on the other side, then," Kenny says, and this time he does leave without looking back.

Walking to the second floor seems to slow time, which is strange, because he's certainly known before that he's going to die, and has set it in motion himself more often than not since he passed the age of thirteen. This is different, and by the time he reaches the top of the stairs he's jogging, afraid of what he'll find inside the master bedroom. When he throws open the door it's just Wendy, sitting up in bed and holding the blankets over herself, looking alarmed but not surprised when she sees him in the doorway.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing," he says. He steps into the room and shuts the door behind him. "I just, I." He swallows, tasting the bitter artificiality of his last meal. "I've had something to eat."

"Oh." She seems as if she hasn't been sleeping, exactly, but like she's been elsewhere. She rubs her hand across her face and down through her hair, pulling at the frayed ends. "Oh, then. Then come here."

She gets out of bed without looking at him and crosses the room with the sheet wrapped around her, not touching him when he reaches for her. In the bathroom, he hears her opening the medicine cabinet and selecting a bottle, the distinct arcade game noise of pills shifting inside a plastic bottle. She comes to the door of the bathroom and wants to look, he thinks, like death in the doorway, watching him on the bed like he's something innocent and she's made up her mind about what she has to do.

"I can do it myself," he says. "If it'll be hard for you."

"Of course it will be hard," she says sharply, but she's not glaring at him, not even frowning, her anger pushed down somewhere deep. "What could you call this but hard?"

"Wendy-"

"Don't say anything." She looks down at the pill bottle. "We should wait thirty minutes or so. For your stomach to settle."

She goes back into the bathroom, and he hears the water running. Downstairs, Craig and Cartman have gone silent, and he imagines them still at the kitchen table, Cartman with his empty bowl and Craig with his empty glass, both of them waiting. Wendy returns with a cup full of water, the pill bottle in her other hand. She puts both on the bedside table, on what would be called her side if the one time they knew each other in this bed could constitute claiming sides.

He almost thinks she'll ignore him until she's judged his stomach to be settled, but as soon as she slides into the bed she grabs for him greedily, and he falls against her, wrapping his arm around her waist. If he could cry it would be for her, but it doesn't come, maybe because she's quiet, just kissing his forehead and smoothing his hair.

"Are you really counting on them?" she whispers when some time has passed, maybe ten minutes. "Craig and Cartman? Of all people?" He huffs and shrugs.

"They have an interest," he says. "If I thought I could go there myself and bring everyone back, I would."

"I would get down on my knees and sell my soul to this devil himself if I thought that would work," Wendy says, squeezing him closer, as if she's afraid of what she's saying. Her voice shakes like she's thinking of saying something more, but it's almost a full minute before she does. "I think I tried to, just now. But nothing happened."

"That's someone protecting you," Kenny says. He wants to take the smell of her with him, the innocent fruit of her shampoo and the darker stuff that lives closer to her skin. "Something bigger than me."

"Oh, shut up," she whispers, her voice rising as she presses her face into his hair. "You know I want it to be you. Don't brag that it's someone else protecting me."

The light changes very subtly, but they've lived through winters when there's been nothing but this gray, and they both feel it, the hours passing. Someone puts a dish in the sink downstairs; water runs. Kenny sits up straighter, and before he can even part his lips, she reaches for the glass of water, the pills. She hands him the glass and taps the pills into her palm. He holds the water and watches her stare at the pills, her eyelids heavy. Her hand isn't shaking anymore.

"I can't live in a world where you want to die," she says, speaking to the pills, almost whispering to them. "That's why I'm doing this."

"I don't want to," he says. "I never wanted any of this."

"I think I know that," she says, still not meeting his eyes as she moves her hand toward his. She tilts her hand so that the pills will drop into his palm, and they stick to her skin, giving way almost one at a time. "That's what's so odd."

"Well, yeah." He stares at the pills; they're blue, with a thin line intersecting the fat shape of each of them. "One of the things that's odd, anyway."

She puts her head on his shoulder, and it's clear enough: she's begging him to end this. He does, swallowing one pill at a time, finishing the whole glass of water. She takes the empty glass, puts it on the bed stand, and returns her head to his shoulder. He puts his hand out and she takes it. It occurs to him only as he starts to feel that tingling that accompanies every anticipated death that he's known: he forgot to doubt her. He trusted that she would do this for him, that it was never a trick intended to protect him, maybe because she spent so many years trying to protect him when they were young, and learned that she couldn't.

He lifts his hand when his vision blurs, and she does, too, webbing her fingers through his, letting him marvel when their hands seem to merge into one thing in the gray light from the window. His breath narrows in a way that feels familiar from his Hell's Pass deaths. He thinks of Stan, of Kyle, and how they might have stayed there at the hospital, how he selfishly chose this instead. He presses his face to Wendy's neck and feels her trembling when she cups his cheek.

"It's okay," she says, her voice breaking so that he knows that it isn't, and he thinks this drug should be even more famous than it is, because he goes just at the moment when he thinks, _wait_, _wait_, _not_ _yet_, and it hurts, but only because he knows that he's leaving her.


	20. Chapter 20

**A/N**: I don't even know where to begin with an author's note for this chapter, really. I guess I'll just say that I'm really eager to hear what you guys are thinking after this one. Four more chapters to go!

* * *

><p>Butters wakes up with a cough. He's startled by the temperature of the hard surface he's lying on, and briefly reassured by the shape of a warm body beside him, slumped and motionless. He thinks it must be Eric and pushes his face toward Eric's shoulder with a moan, but it's not Eric's shoulder. Butters huffs sleepily, his eyes still closed. He's waking up, yet again, to the not unwelcome but much less comforting shape of Tweek. He sits up feeling groggy and extremely thirsty, looking for Stan and Kyle on the other side of the bed. They aren't there, and he's not in a bed at all. He's on the floor in an unfamiliar room.<p>

His alarm grows as consciousness creeps back to him and the details of the place where he's woken up begin to solidify. It's dimly lit and cavernous, almost like a ballroom, and he slowly begins to understand that he didn't arrive here of his own free will. He pushes on Tweek's shoulder, but Tweek doesn't budge; he's sleeping more deeply than Butters has ever seen him do, calm and still. Butters clutches at him as his fright grows sharper, like a tea kettle's steadily intensifying whistle. The last thing he can remember is being in the apartment, Kyle talking about dinner and Tweek panicking over the baby crib that wasn't coming together properly, Karen holding the instructions for assembling it. Then that man appeared. Butters hugs Tweek to him more tightly, his eyes adjusting to the light in the room. Karen is here, too, in the center of the room, on a raised bed with red cushions, lying flat on her back with her arms at her sides. She seems to be sleeping, too.

Butters hears something from the corner of the room, a kind of angry sniff, and his stomach lurches when he turns to see a giant bird in a cage. It's bigger than any bird should be allowed to grow, and Butters can only really see its wings, which are folded, dirty white, and it's got - boots - a man's legs? Or, no; it's huddled around a man, or possibly around a corpse, which the giant bird is maybe eating, though the only noise Butters can hear is another sniff that sounds human, like the guy who's getting eaten only partway objects to what's happening. Butters turns away from the cage, whimpering into Tweek's hair.

"Wake up," he whispers, afraid of that thing, though its cage seems to be locked. He shakes Tweek, who doesn't stir, slumped bonelessly in Butters' arms. "Tweek. Tweek!"

When Tweek won't awaken, Butters sets him down gently, quietly, and tiptoes toward Karen, all the while keeping his eyes on those wings. They twitch a little as Butters sneaks across the room, but the thing in the cage seems almost sedated, hunched over on itself. He can see the head of the man in there, his greasy brown hair, and the man seems to be connected to the wings, which is impossible, but then, so was what they saw back in Kenny's apartment, that dark man who appeared out of thin air, scowled at them, and then - that, actually, is the last thing Butters remembers.

"Karen?" he whispers as he creeps closer to her. He's afraid to touch her, afraid that she'll be cold, though he can see her very pregnant belly moving with her breath. Something about her is off, as if she's an optical illusion being projected here from another room. There's a bluish glow to her skin, and as Butters reaches for her his stomach flips over, as if he's preparing to throw himself out of an airplane.

"I would not touch that girl if I were you," someone says, and Butters startles, wheeling backward and tripping over his own feet. The person who spoke is in the cage with the bird - no, the person who spoke _is_ the bird, only he isn't a bird at all, just a small, angry-looking man with giant wings.

"Wha?" Butters manages, and then he falls onto his ass, landing hard on the floor. The man in the cage grunts and stands shakily, wincing and holding on to the bars as he pulls himself up.

"There is no telling what he's put on her," the man says. "Protective things. You might be hurt if you touch her. That is, if you are not already dead."

"I'm not dead!" Butters says, rubbing his hands over his chest frantically. He can feel his heart pounding, his breath narrowing with panic. "What - where am I?"

"Come over here," the man says. He has a French accent, and Butters thinks of the things Kyle talked about at the apartment, his friend who had died, the cryptic letter. "Do me a favor," the man says, sticking a hand out between the bars of the cage and beckoning Butters closer.

"Wha - no, I - where am I? Who was that man? Who are _you_?" Butters is still on the floor. He glances at Tweek, who hasn't moved.

"I'll answer all your questions, just come here!" the man says, forceful and angry. "You see this table?" He points to a small one that stands about ten feet from the cage. There's an ash tray on it, and what looks like a pack of cigarettes. "Eh?" the man says, still pointing to it when Butters says nothing. "You speak English, yes? Do you see the table?"

"I see it!" Butters says, becoming hysterical as he notices more details of the room. There's what looks like a collection of covered furniture heaped in the front corner, near a pair of elaborately wrought doors that look like they're made of iron. The marble floor is covered with ragged rugs that might have once been opulent, and there's a fireplace on the side of the room opposite the cage, cold and enormous, flanked by candle holders that are taller than Butters and coated with flesh-colored wax.

"So, on the table there are cigarettes," the man with wings says, licking his lips and fidgeting, making Butters think of Tweek. "You will toss them to me, yeah? Then I will tell you anything you want to know."

"What are you?" Butters asks, still too terrified to move. The man curses and snarls, shaking his arms as if he wants to rattle the bars of his cage.

"That is something I will answer once I have those!" he shouts, pointing to the cigarettes again.

"Okay, alright!" Butters says, sobbing with fright, though he's still too stunned and disoriented to actually start crying. He crawls across the floor until he can manage to stand, reaches the table and picks up the cigarettes. The man is growling with interest, his eyes trained on the cigarettes as Butters holds them in his shaking hand, afraid to move any closer to the man's outstretched arm. He thinks of elementary school, gym class, Eric telling him he throws like a girl, and he limply tosses the cigarettes toward the cage. They bounce off one of the bars and land on the ground, but they're close enough for the man to reach, and he drops down with a grunt to retrieve them.

"He's been torturing me with these," the man says, extracting a cigarette from the pack. "Smoking them in front of me, the bastard." He closes his eyes and holds one of the cigarettes under his nose, inhaling deeply. He opens his eyes and narrows them at Butters. "Got a light?" he asks. Butters huffs and sits on the floor again, near the table with the ash tray, his legs like noodles.

"No!" Butters says. "I don't have a light."

"Of course you don't. And that son of a bitch can make fire in his hand, why should he have a lighter?" The man is still sniffing the cigarette as he speaks, and with his hunched shoulders and worn clothes he looks like Golem hoarding the ring.

"Please," Butters says. "What's happened? What's wrong with Tweek and Karen? Why won't they wake up?"

"It will be better for them if they stay asleep," the man says.

"Who are you?" Butters asks. "Why do you have those - things?"

"What, this?" the man takes a handful of one of his wings and tugs at it hatefully. "It's my curse, because I was a fool. Listen to me, my friend - if you should ever be given the opportunity to meet God, spit on the ground and refuse. He will make you his slave if he can."

"Okay," Butters says, trying not to cry. "Are you. Some kind of, um. Angel?"

The man scoffs. "If you want to use that pitiful terminology, yes," he says. "I was something like that, anyway. I thought I could be useful. I was promised that, yes? Ha! Now look at me. Tell me - he brought you here with her. You're from South Park?"

"Yeah," Butters says. "Where is this place? Who was that man?"

"This place is hell and that man is the son of Satan. But never mind that shit - tell me, did Kyle Broflovski ever arrive in South Park? Do you know him?"

"Kyle? Yeah, he arrived."

"And what became of him there? Was he in the company of a man by the name of Stan Marsh?"

"Well, yeah, but listen here, mister!" Butters scowls and gathers all of his strength, managing to stand. "You can't just tell me I'm in hell and leave it at that! What do you mean I'm in hell? I'm not dead! I swear I'm not," he says, his voice wavering a little. He wants Eric. He wants Eric more than he's ever wanted anything, right now, wants to cower behind him and cling to his arm and hide his face against Eric's shoulder until this is over.

"I only need to know that Kyle Broflovski hasn't been harmed," the man says. "I was supposed to be, ah. Seeing to that myself."

"Kyle's fine," Butters says. "Unless that man did something to him, too. He just - popped out of thin air. Looking real angry. How did he do that?"

"Did I not just tell you he's the son of Satan?" The man in the cage sucks on the end of the cigarette as if to drag on it, and sighs. "What I would do for a light," he says, shaking his head. "The things I would do."

"Have you got a name?" Butters asks. "You're not that French fella Kyle grew up with, are you?"

"I am him," the man says, straightening a little. "Christophe. I might have grown up with you, too, in a sense. You look a bit familiar, but perhaps it's just that cud chewing South Park facial expression. How are you involved in all of this?"

"I was staying with Kenny," Butters says. "Kenny McCormick - that's his sister there. Is she okay?"

"Hardly," Christophe says. "And yes, I know who Karen McCormick is. I've spent the past sixteen years cursing the white trash womb that bore McCormick a sister and not another brother."

"Huh?" Butters says. "I thought you were an angel?"

"I'm a slave, did I not just tell you? Can slaves not be frustrated with the lot that's been thrust onto them?"

"That son of Satan fella made you his slave?" Butters will humor this guy for a little bit, but pretty soon he's going to figure a way out of here.

"I'm not a slave to that prick," Christophe says. He pronounces it _preek_, and Butters has to think for a moment before he realizes what that means. "And if I was a slave to God, I should say this breaks my contract."

"Your contract?"

"Never mind my pathetic situation," Christophe says. He sucks on the cigarette again. "You should think about your own."

"How can I get out of here?" Butters asks, stepping closer to the cage. "What does this guy want with me, anyway?"

"I shudder to imagine. Probably nothing, but in that case I should think you would be dead. I suppose it's obvious what he wants from her." Christophe gestures to Karen with the cigarette.

"A bride?" Butters asks, his eyes going wide.

"Ha! Don't give him so much credit. He wants an incubator that might give him an invincible Antichrist. I fear that he's done it, too."

"I'm so confused," Butters says, moaning. There's a startled sound from behind him, and he turns to see Tweek scrabbling against the marble floor, flinching awake and taking in the room fearfully.

"Fantastic," Christophe mutters.

"What the fuck?" Tweek shouts. His back hits the wall as Butters comes toward him. "Where - Jesus, where are we?"

"It's okay," Butters says, though he's starting to get the feeling it's not. He kneels down beside Tweek and lets Tweek cling to him. "We're just, ah. I'm working on it."

"What the hell happened to her?" Tweek shrieks, pointing at Karen.

"She's - sleeping."

"'Ey, twitchy!" Christophe hisses from the cage. "Keep it down, huh? The next time he comes into this room I'm probably going to have to watch him kill you. I'm not looking forward to it."

"Who the hell is that?" Tweek says, still shouting, pointing at Christophe. "What the fuck - does he have - wings? Ah!"

"Calm down, okay?" Butters says, trying not to get angry with Tweek, who is trying to climb him like an agitated lemur. "We're going to get out of here, we just have to be calm for a minute and think."

"Be calm all you like," Christophe says. "But I can't help you, unless you can get this cage open, and I don't think you can."

"What the hell is that thing?" Tweek asks, the pitch of his voice still ear-splittingly loud, echoing around the room. Butters claps a hand over Tweek's mouth and raises his eyebrows.

"Tweek," he says. "I need you to relax. That's - I don't know. Kyle's friend, the French one."

"The dead one?" Tweek says, his voice muffled against Butters' palm. Butters shrugs.

"Well, he might be an angel, yeah."

"Jesus Christ!" Tweek rips Butters' hand away from his mouth. "Am I dreaming?"

"I don't think so," Butters says glumly. "I wish you were. Remember when Stan and Kyle were talking about how they had a bad feeling, like something was gonna happen? Well. I think it happened."

"Are we _dead_?" Tweek asks, way too loud, and Butters groans.

"Shh!" he says, holding a finger to his lips. "Do you remember that man who popped into Karen's room? Right out of the air, like magic?"

"Yeah - oh, fuck me! That was _real_?"

"I think, yeah. And he's holding us here, and I think Christophe is right, we should try to be quiet until we figure things out."

"Who the fuck is Christophe?" Tweek asks, still shouting.

"Shut that yapping dog up before he gets you both killed!" Christophe hisses from the cage. He's got his hands around the bars again, the unlit cigarette clamped between his lips.

"Tweek," Butters whispers, but it's too late. There are footsteps outside the giant iron doors, soft but close. Butters freezes, his hand over Tweek's mouth again, though Tweek has gone silent, too. He's breathing hard against Butters' palm as what sounds like a key scrapes against the door. When it's successfully inserted there's a heavy, gut-clenching _click_ that seems to reverberate through the walls, and the knob turns.

"Shit," Christophe says. He takes the cigarette from his mouth and sticks it behind his ear, watching the door while it creaks open slowly, as if the opener can barely handle its weight.

The person who comes through the door is not the dark, imposing young man who materialized in the middle of Karen's bedroom and somehow brought them here. He's a man, but he's the opposite of that other one in almost every way: he's small, willowy and blond, dressed in a rumpled white shirt and tan shorts. He's also sporting a fussy red vest, knee high socks, shiny black loafers, and a brown leather cap that reminds Butters of something, or someone.

"Oh, hello," the man says, frowning when he sees Butters and Tweek cowering by the wall. His eyes move to Karen, then to Christophe's cage. He frowns and stumbles backward, bringing a hand to his chest. "What the bloody hell?" he says. He's British, he's-

"_Pip_?" Butters says, because that's the same hat that kid used to wear, and the same hair cut, more or less.

"That's right," Pip says, still standing by the door, still frowning. "How do you know my name?"

"That's not Pip!" Tweek shrieks. "Pip is dead!"

"It's him, twitchy," Christophe says. "You not-dead people are in the minority down here."

"But he was a kid when he died," Butters says, frowning. "Now he's, um-" Butters would guess that Pip is roughly the same age as him and Tweek, as if he's aged along with them.

"He can look as old or as young as he wants to down here," Christophe says. "That's a trick his _special_ _friend_ taught him." He sniffs with disgust and looks toward the iron doors.

"What on earth is going on?" Pip asks, walking closer to Tweek and Butters. "Do I know you chaps somehow? Are you lost? New or something?"

"Damien brought them here, genius," Christophe says. He smirks and puts the cigarette back in his mouth. "Surprise."

"Who are you?" Pip asks, boggling at him. "And, my God, who is this woman?"

"I'm nobody," Christophe says. "Just a victim of the lunatic you're shacked up with. It's her you should be worried about." He flicked his chin toward Karen.

"Is she alright?" Pip asks, rushing toward her. Butters can't believe this, though he supposes he should start getting used to unbelievable things.

"She's alright for now," Christophe says as Pip examines Karen, lifting one of her limp wrists. "At least as long as she's got that unholy bun in her oven."

"What are you talking about?" Pip asks, glaring at Christophe. "How did you get here? Why are you in that cage?"

"Why?" Christophe takes an imaginary puff on the cigarette. "Because God hates me, that's why."

"Oh, for the love of- and who are you two, exactly?" Pip asks, turning back to Butters and Tweek.

"You don't remember us?" Butters asks. "I guess the last time you saw us we looked a lot different. Heck, you did, too. My name's Butters, and this here is Tweek. From South Park."

"Christ, are you serious?" Pip walks closer to them, narrowing his eyes and approaching cautiously, as if Butters and Tweek are wild animals who might claw at him. "Don't _tell_ me this is some sort of revenge thing he's doing."

"It is much worse than that, my friend," Christophe says. "Say, Pip. _Psst!_ Cream puff! Have you got a light?"

"My word," Pip says, ignoring Christophe and drawing closer to Butters. "It really is you. But you - you're not dead, I can feel it. How on earth did you get here?"

"I don't know," Butters says. "But you have to help us get out, okay? We were friends, remember? You and me?"

Pip's expression darkened. "Until that Eric Cartman boy wanted you to help him dump taco meat down the back of my shirt in the lunch room," Pip says. "I suppose we were friends when it was convenient for you."

"Oh, Jesus!" Tweek says, shrieking. "We didn't mean any of that shit, dude! We were just a bunch of dumb kids!"

"That's all in the past, anyway," Pip says, straightening. "If Damien brought you here to torture you, I won't let him. Really, I don't know why he'd pick you two chaps over Cartman or someone worse."

"Are you stupid?" Christophe shouts from the cage. "Damien doesn't care about avenging you, you fucking ass! He doesn't care about anything but that!" Christophe flings his arm out through the bars and points to Karen. "Is nothing about this picture strange to you? Eh?"

"Well, she's pregnant," Pip says, putting a finger to his lips. He's quiet for a moment, Christophe cursing in French and pacing in his cage. Pip sucks in his breath, his eyes widening. "Oh," he says, still staring at Karen. "Oh, Christ, no. That can't be what he's-"

"What?" Butters says when Pip stops there, his face frozen in shock.

"No," Pip says, softly, to himself. "He can't have."

"He can and he has!" Christophe says, coming to the front of the cage again. "And if you have any inkling of compassion left for humanity, stop thinking like a come bucket and let me out of here so I can do something about it!"

There are footsteps outside, angry and loud, getting closer. Someone is descending a staircase, hurrying toward the open iron door. Tweek whines in fear and curls tightly around Butters, who suddenly doesn't mind his clinging. Butters clings, too, terrified, his heart pounding.

"Too late, then," Christophe says, and he's back to cursing in French.

The door, which took Pip roughly ten seconds to slowly force his way through, is thrown open like a paper screen, slamming hard against the wall and rattling the room with a kind of localized earthquake. Tweek screams, and Butters cradles him to his chest, regarding the figure in the doorway with horror. It's the dark-haired man who appeared in Karen's room, and his presence is just as instantly frightful as it was when he popped out of thin air. He's not very big, maybe six feet tall and of an average build, but his presence is bigger than the massive iron doors themselves, which are towering and thick, dangerous-looking. The man is dangerous-looking himself, though it would be hard to say why, except that he's obviously furious, seething as he surveys the room.

"I told you never to come in here," he says, speaking to Pip. His voice is like gravel, as if he's forcing the words out over hot coals.

"Well, I heard voices!" Pip says. He doesn't seem afraid, standing his ground and glowering, his fists shaking at his sides. "And now that I've seen what's in here I think I deserve an explanation!"

"Oh, is that what you deserve?" The dark-haired main growls and slashes his arm through the air as if to swat away an invisible bird that dared to dart past him. As he does, some of the furniture in the corner tumbles down from beneath the dusty white sheets that covered it, glass breaking. "Because I think you deserve a fucking beating," the man says as he comes to stand face to face with Pip. He's a head taller and a good deal bigger than Pip, and though Butters has no real love for Pip at the moment, he doesn't want to see him get beaten. Pip doesn't seem frightened; he doesn't even flinch.

"I deserve to know what goes on in my own house!" Pip says. "Why is there a living, pregnant woman here? And people from South Park? And that - whatever that is!" Pip says, gesturing to Christophe. "My God, Damien! What have you done?"

"Your house?" Damien says. "This is your house?"

"I should think so, after five hundred and sixty-eight years!"

"Will you fucking give it a rest with the goddamn years?" Damien says, shouting this in Pip's face. Pip still isn't budging, his hands on his hips. "Time doesn't exist for you anymore, you stubborn little shit! I don't care how long you think you've been here, this is my house and you'll do what I fucking say!"

"That's funny, because last time I checked it was your father's house."

"My -? Oh, that's - I will skin you over a fucking fire-"

"Keep saying that, yes! It really means a lot after five hundred and sixty-eight years! And I can measure time however I damn well choose to!"

Tweek lifts his head from Butters chest and frowns. He looks at Pip and Damien, who are standing near Karen, glaring at each other, then looks at Butters, who can only gape at him in response.

"This is truly hell," Christophe mutters from his cage. "I'd rather be playing charades with the goddamn Mormons."

"You shut the fuck up!" Damien says, pointing at Christophe. "You think I wouldn't kill you if I could? And what - how did you get those?" He flicks his hand in a come-hither gesture and the cigarettes zip from the floor of Christophe cage and into Damien's palm, the one Christophe had tucked behind his ear trailing after the rest of the pack. Damien snatches it out of midair, sticks it between his lips, and lights it with a fireball that sparks and quickly disappears inside his palm. He takes a drag on the cigarette and turns away from Pip, pacing and cursing under his breath.

"I can't believe you thought you could keep this from me," Pip says. "What have you done?"

"I knew you'd be ungrateful," Damien says.

"Ungrateful? What am I supposed to be grateful for? Don't tell me this woman is pregnant with - with your-"

"As if I would risk bringing an unborn soul that I didn't have a claim to down here!" Damien says, whirling around to face him again. "Of course it's mine! If you'd just stay out of it-"

"Stay out of it!" Pip huffs and rips off his hat. "Excuse me? That's where you've been going? On your fucking business trips? You've been - _with_ this woman? Who the hell is she?"

"She's the only person in the universe who could give us an immortal child!" Damien says, close to the doors now, shouting this across the room. "Maybe, anyway," he says more quietly, and he drags on the cigarette.

Pip is quiet for a moment. Butters and Tweek exchange another glance, both of them reeling, and Butters looks to Christophe. He's hanging on the bars of his cage, looking bored and disgusted.

"Us?" Pip says, scowling. "This - this is your-"

"I did all of it for you, fucking ingrate!" Damien shouts. "You weren't supposed to come in here, you weren't supposed to find out until it was done, but that fucking Broflovski son of a bitch had to meddle with me again-"

"Broflovski!" Christophe says, snapping to attention. "Kyle? What have you done to him?"

"Done to him?" Damien scoffs. "Nothing but save his worthless life, something for which I'll apparently never stop being punished."

"Saved his life how?" Christophe says. "By ripping him away from his family, taking his memories, blocking me from knowing what you'd done to the other one?"

"That was - unintentional," Damien says. "And the bastards should still thank me, unless they think they would have been better off freezing to death, drowning, ending up in hell."

"Why would you care that they lived?" Christophe asks. "What the hell did you need them alive for?"

"McCormick comes and goes as he pleases," Damien says. He seems cowed now, sucking on the cigarette. "I couldn't have them telling him what I was doing with his sister. You can't alter the memories of the dead, and that motherfucker's been dead a thousand times over."

"Excuse me," Pip says. "Can someone please tell what in the name of bloody fuck you're both talking about?"

"Look, you wanted a baby!" Damien says to Pip, angry again. "I tried everything, you remember, it was fucking awful. Those transfigured rocks, how they'd turn back into a rock when the thing fell asleep-"

"Don't talk about that!" Pip says, closing his eyes and turning away, his hands over his ears. "Oh, Christ, I can't go through this again!"

"I couldn't give you a human soul, _Phillip_, but she can," Damien says, walking closer to him and gesturing to Karen with his cigarette. "And better, too. Not something like me that could still die. The McCormicks struck some kind of deal with a cult, I wish I could figure out how, but they're just stupid enough not to know how the fuck they did it themselves, or how any of it works. The children they had afterward are immortal. At least, the middle one is, and this woman should be, too, since she was born after the spell was cast. I've never actually let her die, because she might have figured things out-"

"Why not just jump out of a bush and have your way with her?" Christophe asks, sneering. "That is more your style, yeah? Why go to all this trouble to keep her in the dark?"

"There are rules," Damien says. He smiles coldly. "What, God doesn't tell you these things?"

"Rules?" Pip says when Christophe only scowls at Damien. "Rules about what?"

"About doling out souls," Damien says, turning back to Pip. "What do you think, God hands out a soul to every demon who fucks a mortal against her will? It had to be consensual, she had to want it. That takes time, and effort, _years_, and that little Broflovski shit was going to ruin everything. I was only going to wipe his memory of me, I'd done it before when I needed to, but he had to get himself nearly killed, because that's what mortals fucking do, and the other snot-nosed asshole had to jump in after him, and what could I do? It's a very delicate spell, and I - I was younger then, and in - in the heat of the moment-"

"You fucked it up," Christophe says. He smiles when Damien glowers at him. "That's fantastic. I always wondered what you were getting out of this exactly, why you planned it this way, but you didn't plan it at all, eh?"

"Didn't plan what?" Pip asks. He sounds like he might cry. "Damien, I'm really getting - very upset - you had an affair with this woman-"

"It was just for the baby!" Damien says. He throws his cigarette down and stomps on it before walking to Pip. "This Broflovski kid, he somehow worked out what I was doing, or anyway I think he was on to me, and he'd told his friend, whatever his name is-"

"Stan?" Butters says meekly, and he cowers when they all turn to him.

"Yes, _Stan_, how could I forget," Damien says. "Anyway, they knew, and they were going to tell McCormick, and he was going to tell his sister, and my one shot at getting you a truly immortal offspring who had the human soul that you _so __wanted_, if you'll recall, was going to be blown, so yes, I was going to erase their memories, and yes, in the process of trying to keep them from ending up in hell where they'd fuck up my plans even worse, I had to save their lives, and apparently in doing so I flung them to the far corners of the world and wiped their memories, and the fact that the whole town forgot them is actually, I mean, _I__ think_, pretty impressive, in terms of spell strength, considering it wasn't even my intention-"

"You're mad if you thought I'd be happy about this," Pip says, backing away from him. "You and this girl - you seduced her-"

"For you! It was phony, it was all for you-"

"Ha!" Christophe says, pressing his face between the bars of his cage. "Is that so? Guess what, you fucking bastard? I do know some things about how God works, or how souls do, anyway. You're half demon, but you're mortal, too, and you can die, yes?" Christophe turns his unfriendly smile toward Pip. "Where did your boyfriend tell you he'll go when he dies, eh? You think he would just stay here, as he is now, and keep on fucking you for all eternity?"

"Where else would he go?" Pip asks, frowning. He looks at Damien, who is lighting another cigarette.

"Oh, he'd still be in hell," Christophe says. "But he wouldn't have a dick he could fuck you with anymore, or his half human soul, he'd be pure demon-"

"You don't know that!" Damien shouts, smoke pouring from his nose.

"And you don't know that I'm wrong!" Christophe says. "But you know that if you had a connection to a living soul, if you'd given some human a life, you'd be able to keep looking like something this little come rag wants to cuddle, and not like one of those jagged-toothed black things that you kick out of your way when you go down for the newspaper."

"Well, so what if I was thinking about that, too?" Damien roars. He turns back to Pip, who is still backing away from him. "And don't you see what I was trying to give you? Not just a soul that could really belong to us, that could belong here, but one that can't die! McCormick gets a new body anytime he wants one. You still get to be human down here, forever, and you don't know what it's like - if someone were to kill me, the mortal half of me - I didn't want you thinking about it, but goddammit, I could end up like one of those imps, mindless and inhuman-"

"That can't be true," Pip says, shaking his head and worrying his hat between his hands.

"Can't it?" Damien says. "I'm my father's only child. Even he doesn't know what will happen when the mortal half of me dies. Fuck, maybe God doesn't even know," he says, muttering.

"And what about her?" Pip asks, pointing a shaking finger at Karen. "What are you going to do, keep her down here as our nurse maid? Send her back up without her memory?"

"Of course I'm going to send her back up without her memory! That was the whole point of making sure she never died over all those years, so she wouldn't end up like her goddamn brother with his indestructible memory. You don't know how many times I had to whisk her away from a speeding bus or make sure she was elsewhere during a meth lab explosion, for fuck's sake - Death tries to course correct for the fact that it can't really have them-"

"So you have no sympathy for her, no feelings at all?" Pip says, batting Damien's hand away when he tries to reach for him. "You used her, and now you'll take her baby?"

"Well, yes." Damien drags on the cigarette, frowning. "She won't mind. Christ, I think she'd thank us if she could. She can't afford to raise a child. I had to spoon feed her a blackmail scheme just to make sure she had the necessities of survival while the baby incubated."

"Incubated?" Pip glares at him. "This is a person, Damien! Not some kind of - seed pod! And what will become of them?" He gestures to Butters and Tweek, who press back against the wall.

"I'll wipe their memories and send them back," Damien says with a shrug. "After the baby is born, just to be safe."

"And what if you screw up again, eh?" Christophe says. "What if they end up in Istanbul and Paris with no memories, and South Park has forgotten them?"

"What do I care either way?" Damien asks. He smirks and brings the cigarette to his lips. "I've gotten what I needed. Not in the most ideal fashion, but she can deliver the baby here, I'll send her back, she'll end up wherever she ends up, and McCormick can spend another ten years trying to convince that pathetic town that he had a sister and some friends, once. Do you think I give a shit what happens to South Park? Oh, and by the way." He walks closer to the cage, close enough to blow smoke in Christophe's face. "Kyle Broflovski is on his death bed. Seems that since I don't need him alive anymore, that spell I did to save him is wearing off. Maybe I'll bring him here to visit you after he dies, so you can apologize in person for being the most pathetic guardian to ever wear wings."

Butters expects Christophe to say something cutting in response, but he just lets his head drop between his shoulders, his hands still wrapped around the bars of the cage. Damien laughs and blows more smoke at him. Tweek hides his face against Butters' chest again.

"That guy's gonna fucking kill us all, man," Tweek says, whispering. Butters shakes his head, though he's not sure that isn't true, and even if they live, their memories will be erased. Butters thinks of Eric and closes his eyes, pushing his face into Tweek's hair. He's dizzy with confusion and doesn't really know anything except that they're in trouble and that he wants Eric. If Damien makes him forget Eric, and if Eric forgets him, it will be like he never existed at all. He might as well be dead; he thinks he might rather be.

"This is wrong," Pip says, his voice shaking. "If you've done this for me, you've got to undo it. I don't want it, Damien. I don't want any of this!"

"Well, it's too late," Damien says, his voice low and tired-sounding as he walks away from Christophe's cage, flicking ashes onto the floor. "You can't erase a soul, and this one's ours."

"You could send it back, though!" Pip says. "You told me - that's why we never have any children here younger than eight, yes? Because that's when the Mormons baptize?"

"What are you suggesting?" Damien says, louder now. "That I turn back time? You know I didn't inherit that power - fuck, if only I had! All I got is this watered down, half-mortal version, this memory altering bullshit, but I think I've done alright with it, considering, and you're going to thank me for all of this someday."

"I won't," Pip says, backing away when Damien approaches him again. "In fact, I. I think I shall have to leave you if you don't fix this somehow."

"Leave me?" Damien throws his cigarette away, sparks trailing across one the worn carpets on the floor. "And go where? There is no place for you in this fucking universe but with me!"

"I want that to be true!" Pip shouts. "But you don't make it easy!"

"I don't give a damn if it's easy for you or not! You're mine and you'll do as I say!"

"Don't pretend you don't need me to want to!"

"Need you? I don't need shit from you!"

"No? Then why have you done all this, why have you rearranged your life around a dream I gave up hundreds of years ago-"

"Here we go again with your imaginary goddamn years!" Damien growls and kicks over the table that held the cigarettes, the little ash tray that still sat upon it spinning off wildly into one of the dark corners of the room. "You said you wanted something and I got it for you!" He gestures to Karen. "Why do you need to complicate this? Why must you complicate _everything_ in my _fucking_ _life_?"

"Because it's not much of a life without me, is it? How can you pretend that I'm the only one who has anything to lose here?"

Butters feels Tweek looking at him and glances down at his frightened face, Damien and Pip still screaming at each other on the other side of the room.

"What?" Butters asks, whispering.

"Ah - nothing!" Tweek winces, his shoulders jerking. "Just. Fuck! I miss Craig."

"Oh," Butters says. He looks at Damien and Pip, who are in each other's faces now, spitting with anger, Pip trying to puff himself up to Damien's height. "I miss Eric," Butters says, hugging Tweek closer to him. "A lot, oh, Jesus." He closes his eyes and moans, remembering what it felt like to fall asleep on Eric's chest, cozy inside their house, where nothing could hurt him. If those memories are taken from him, he'll never feel warm again.

"Craig would – fuck!" Tweek whines and tugs at Butters' sweater. "He'd know what to do!"

"Eric would!" Butters says, huffing.

There's a sound from out in the hallway, a kind of clap like a shutter banging against a sudden wind, and everyone goes quiet.

"Who's that?" Pip asks, breathless from shouting. He moves closer to Damien. "Your father?"

"Oh, Jesus, no!" Tweek says, whimpering and hiding his face against Butters' neck. Butters wants to hide, too, but he can't move, his eyes wide open and trained on the door. There are footsteps and voices, but none of it sounds especially Satanic. One of the voices actually sounds like -

"_Eric_!"

Butters thinks he must be dreaming when Eric barrels through the open doorway, his big coat open over his uniform and his gun in his hand. Craig is close behind him, looking stricken and frightened, but his eyes change when he sees Tweek, who yelps with surprise.

"Butters!" Eric shouts, his voice breaking a little on the second syllable, and Butters sobs, releasing Tweek and standing. Everything is going to be okay now; Eric is here, Eric will save him.

"What the fuck is this?" Damien shouts, the weary hysteria that had crept into his voice gone, his words gravelly and hard again. He moves toward Eric and Craig, stepping in front of Pip. "How did you get here?"

"Hey, motherfucker," Eric says, pointing his gun at Damien. "Time to die."

"No!" Pip shouts.

"Eric, wait!" Butters cries, halfway across the room, but he's too late. Eric fires.

Damien doesn't flinch. The bullet stops just a foot from his face and melts in midair, liquid metal dropping onto the marble floor. Eric fires again, and again, and these bullets meet the same fate.

"Finished?" Damien says. Eric's mouth falls open, and before he can speak Damien slashes his hand through the air. Eric's gun flies out of his hand and smashes against the wall near the pile of covered furniture, exploding into dust. With a flick of his wrist, Damien sends Eric in the same direction, and Butters screams as Eric sails through the air like a doll, landing in the pile of covered furniture with a splintering crash. Craig jumps backward, flattening himself against the iron door.

"Eric!" Butters cries, running to him. He's lying on his back amidst the broken furniture, motionless. Damien reaches him before Butters can, and he puts his foot on Eric's chest, wrenching a strangled scream from him as he presses his weight onto him.

"That's for how you treated my Pip while he was alive, you fat piece of shit," Damien says, low enough that only Butters can hear.

"Get off of him!" Butters shouts, grabbing Damien's arm and yanking him away from Eric. Damien is disturbingly solid and warm, as alive as Butters, and his eyes are full of something darker than death when he turns to snarl at Butters.

"Stop!" Pip shouts when Damien lifts his other arm as if to swat Butters away like an insect. Pip catches it and drags Damien backward. "Jesus, Damien, look what you've done!"

They all turn back to Eric, who is moaning, still draped lifelessly across the pile of broken furniture and twisted white sheets. Butters hurries to him when he sees what Pip has already noticed: a bright red stain that's seeping out from Eric's back, soaking the sheets.

"Eric?" Butters drops down to his side, afraid to touch him for fear of worsening his wound. "Have - have - are you hurt?"

"Butters, Jesus," Eric coughs and moans, wincing. "Ah - fuh - what'd he do to you?" Eric reaches up to cup Butters' cheek when Butters crouches down to do the same, hugging Eric's face to his. Eric smells like shaving cream; his cheeks are smooth and a little sticky, and Butters wants so badly to go back to the world of familiar things, to that house where he would sit in a bath on Sunday mornings and watch while Eric shaved at the sink.

"I'm fine," Butters says, barely able to make his shaking voice work. He can feel the knees of his jeans getting wet as the blood that's seeping across the sheets continues to spread. "Hah - have you got - something - your back-"

"I-" Eric tries to move and groans. His eyes are wet when he opens them again. "I'm stuck on something. Fuh – _fuck_, ah, God, that hurts! It's – it's in my back-"

"Here, let me-" Butters tries to lift him and Eric screams, shaking his head. More blood washes down to soak against Butters' knees, then down along the length of his legs.

"Just – leave it," Eric says when he can talk again, his eyes pinched shut. "Don't-"

"Okay, alright, shh." Butters can see what it is now: the broken table that once held the cigarettes, one of its legs snapped in half. That's what Eric landed on; that's what's stuck in his back, bleeding him out.

"Jesus," Pip says from somewhere in the distance; he seems very far away now, a dream that Butters was having before Eric came, but this has to be a dream, too. Eric's face is getting very pale, his lips shaking.

"Don't look at me like that!" Damien snaps, presumably at Pip. "He tried to kill me! This is that fat asshole who tortured you, don't you recognize him? Eric Cartman!"

"You've never killed anyone," Pip says, his voice very small. "Not as a demon, not as a person, in all this time, not in-"

"I swear to God, Pip, if you say five hundred and sixty-eight years-"

"You're gonna be okay," Butters says, whispering to Eric. Butters has never seen him look frightened like this, not even when Liane died, his eyes big and unguarded.

"Is this really hell?" Eric asks, still holding Butters' face, his fingers twitching weakly. Butters nods.

"I think so," he says. He kisses Eric's cheeks. "But that's good, see, 'cause these people can do magic, they're angels and stuff-"

"Oh, fuck." Eric winces and tries to move, whimpering with pain. "Fuh- fucking _Kenny_. You were right about him, ah – okay?" Eric opens his eyes again, and Butters wipes them dry with his thumbs. "He got us here, Kenny got us here, he told me he'd get me to you and he did."

"McCormick?" Damien says, growling the name out. "How? What's he done now? God_dammit_, he was put on the earth to torment me!"

"You can help him, can't you?" Butters says, whirling to look at the group of gawkers behind him. "Please, hurry! Someone's got to help Eric, he's hurt. You can all do – do magic, right? Please!"

Damien is stone-faced, his hands at his sides. Pip has his hands pressed over his mouth, and Christophe is shaking his head, looking dejected. Craig is slowly but surely inching his way across the room, toward Tweek, who is still cowering by the wall, his arms over his head.

"I hope you're not looking at me," Damien says to Butters, who is looking at him, because he said he saved Kyle's life once.

"Please!" Butters says. "I'll do anything, please!"

"Hey, no," Eric says. His hand drops to the collar of Butters' sweater, and he pulls Butters' face down to his again. "Don't say that, shit! He's – the devil – or the son of him – something – so don't-"

"I don't care," Butters says, sobbing. He turns back to Damien. "Please, just help him, you can have anything you want."

"Butters, don't make me kill you myself!" Eric says, dragging him back again. "Stop it with that shit!"

"Can't you do something for him?" Pip asks, tugging at Damien's elbow. "You've been so good, Damien, you've stayed so human-"

"What the hell do you want me to do, summon a first aid kit?" Damien scoffs. "You know I don't have fucking healing powers, and anyway, he brought it on himself! You should be laughing at that pig, after everything he did to you."

"We were children," Pip says, releasing Damien's arm. "That was so long ago." He walks away, toward Karen. On the other side of the room, Craig gets within throwing distance of Tweek and stops trying to reach him subtly; they dash toward each other, and Tweek hides his face in Craig's chest as Craig wraps his arms around him, keeping his eyes on the action on the other side of the room.

"You saved Kyle!" Butters says, shouting at Damien, who turns to Butters and narrows his eyes. "Please, so you can save Eric, too, can't you? I'll give you anything you want, I'll help you-"

"Butters, shut the fuck up!" Eric says, yanking at him weakly.

"Don't worry, tubby," Damien says. "As tempted as I am to make a mindless slave out of your fuck toy, I can't help you. Look at me, I'm a fucking demon. I don't have any magical healing powers. I saved Broflovski and Marsh the same way I impaled you. Broflovski fell through some ice, Marsh jumped in to save him, and I couldn't have them ending up in hell with what they knew about me, so I levitated them out of there and made sure they didn't know it anymore. All I can do for you is lift you off of whatever you're stuck on, but I think that would just expedite your death, which I for one am all for."

"Then you," Butters says, already ignoring Damien. He points to Christophe. "You're an angel, aren't you? You have to help him, please!"

"I can't do shit from in here, and ah-" Christophe curses and rubs a hand over his face. "I'll be honest with you, my friend. Even if he did let me out, I can't do anything. God is a cruel son of a bitch, and he gave me no powers. None that mean anything, anyway."

"But you've got to have powers!" Butters says, shouting. "Look at you – you've – you've got wings!"

"Butters," Eric says, pulling him back. "Fuck it, dude, it's okay. I cuh – I can't – it doesn't even hurt anymore."

"Eric, no," Butters says. The sheet he's kneeling on is soaked now, slimy under his legs as he moves closer to Eric and hugs himself around him. Eric's arms are limp, one flopped onto his chest and the other splayed out onto the sheet, over the wreckage of the broken furniture. Butters cries against Eric's neck, where he's still so warm, even a little sweaty. His pulse is weakening.

"Just go back with Craig," Eric says when Butters lifts his face. "Kenny promised. He promised a lot of crazy shit, but. He promised we could get you back. I believe him now, fuck. When you go back, you can tell him I believed him."

"No, I won't go anywhere without you," Butters says, sobbing.

"Damien, there's really got to be something you could do," Pip says, but he doesn't sound very hopeful. Damien huffs.

"Why should I do anything? These people broke into our house, and they're working with McCormick, trying to ruin my life-"

"Oh, so now it's _our_ house?"

They start bickering again, but Butters can't pay attention. He's petting Eric's face, choking on sobs while he watches the fear in Eric's eyes drain away until it's something more like resignation. Eric swallows heavily and sighs against Butters' face.

"I'm going to hell," Eric says, his voice hoarse and small. "Fuck me, there's no way around it. I'll be here forever."

"Then I'll stay," Butters says. "He can kill me, too, I'll stay here with you."

Eric huffs and lets Butters kiss his lips, which are colorless and cool. "I don't think it works that way," he says when Butters pulls back to look into his eyes again. Eric's eyelids are getting heavier, his lashes trembling. Butters shakes his head.

"I'll make it work that way," he says.

"Why? Thought you. Hated me."

"Stupid," Butters whispers, and he kisses Eric again, on his lips and his chin, his wet cheeks. "Of course I don't hate you. You're the only reason I'd want to go back. I'll go wherever you go. I don't want be away from you anymore. Just – don't be afraid. We're gonna be together, I promise, I'll fix it so we are."

"Jesus, Butters," Eric says. He doesn't seem afraid, or like he believes what Butters is saying. "You wanna – you wanna know something?"

"What?" Butters sniffles and closes his eyes, his forehead pressed to Eric's.

"You wanna know what – ah. The best day of my, like. Life, was?"

"What was it?" Butters keeps his eyes closed and strokes Eric's face, listening to his breath grow ragged.

"This – this day in high school," Eric says. He coughs, moans. "Um, I, I'd told you to meet me at my house, you know, after school, and my mom had let you in. And I was pissed at her, heh, bitching at her for letting you up in my room when I wasn't there, 'cause, like, I thought you'd, I don't know, rifle through my shit. So I, I went upstairs all pissed off, wanting to chew you out, and I opened the door and you, you must 'a been there for awhile because, like, you were on the bed, sleeping, all curled up around my pillow, and it was maybe like, four o'clock, so you were, um, lit up, from the window, and just, your shirt was pushed up in back, and I think you were, like, smiling, in your sleep. Who the fuck smiles in their sleep? You did. That day. I just. Stood there, for so long."

"I know," Butters says. He sobs and opens his eyes. "I wasn't really sleeping. I was pretending."

"So – why'd you let me-"

"Because I was afraid you'd stop. If I – if you knew. Eric, oh. I wish I had opened my eyes every time, every time you touched me, I should have."

"No, fuck, that would have freaked me out. You did everything right, Butters, okay? I was the one who fucked it all up."

"Please don't say that." Butters is crying almost too hard to talk now, because Eric's pulse has become just a little sputtering thing, and he's losing the fight to keep his eyes open. "You made my life so happy. That day when you came in, when I was sleeping - that was my best day, too, okay? When you woke me up, Eric, do you remember? You sat on the bed, and leaned down, and, and that was the first time you kissed me. Remember, Eric? We'd done other stuff, but that day, you kissed me, and it was so – so – remember?"

Eric doesn't answer. His eyes are closed, and his pulse has stopped tapping against Butters' fingertips. He gets cold so fast, and Butters tries to keep him warm, his arms around Eric, his face on his chest, and Butters' tears are hot, that should count for something, but he can't do anything, it's over, he's gone.

"Where is he?" Butters asks, lifting his face to the others, choking the words out. Pip is sitting on the floor near Karen, his hands over his face, and Damien is staring at him. Craig has opened his overcoat and wrapped Tweek into it, and they're both looking at Butters, pale with shock, holding on to each other. Christophe is gripping the bars of his cage and staring at his shoes, saying something in French that might be a prayer or a curse, muttering it over and over.

"Well?" Butters says, shouting. "Where's his spirit gone, where's his soul? Is it in hell somewhere? Take me there! Do I need to die first?"

"Uh," Damien says, looking at Pip again, but Pip still has his face covered. "He's, like. Being processed, I guess."

"Take me there!" Butters screams, enraged by this mess that ruined Kenny's life and came back to claim his and Eric's, too. "Kill me so I can go there."

"Please, don't!" Pip says, standing. He's shaking, bracing himself on the bed Karen is stretched out on. "Damien, you're ruining yourself. You are going to turn into one of those imps someday if you let this go on. You won't lose your soul when you die – you're losing it already, destroying it! You won't be rewarded for any of this. I don't care what sort of connection you have to this – child." He looks at Karen sadly. "Don't you see what you're doing? You're sealing your fate by trying to escape it."

"This is not a fucking Greek tragedy," Damien says. He seems rattled, trying to light a cigarette in his palm and coming up with only plumes of smoke. "There are rules."

"And you heard these rules from who?" Christophe says. "You're making them up as you go along, just like that fucking spell you were trying to work when you wiped the memories of a whole goddamn town. Maybe that should have been your first clue that you didn't know what the _fuck_ you were doing and you should turn back, eh?"

"You're a flying eunuch," Damien says, looking at him with disgust. "You wouldn't understand."

Butters sobs and puts his face against Eric's chest again, not wanting to hear anymore of this. He finds Eric's cold, limp hand and kisses it, making promises to Eric in his head, telling him that he'll find him, no matter what, somehow.

"How about them?" Pip says. "Don't they understand? Look what you've done, and you don't even care! I don't know you. I've already lost you."

"That was an accident! And what the hell did you expect? You want me to let some asshole who tortured you when you were alive fire his gun at me? Maybe you wanted him to kill me, is that it? So we could find out once and for all what happens to half a soul when it loses its body?"

"Um, excuse me."

Butters recognizes that voice, distinctly nasal: Craig.

"Can we, like," Craig says, and though Butters doesn't lift his face, he imagines Craig giving Tweek an uncertain look. "Go?"

"You'll go when I say you can!" Damien roars, his voice filling the room like a blow torch.

"Okay, that's cool," Craig says hurriedly. Butters looks up to see him cowering, his eyes wide. Tweek is hidden almost completely inside the coat, his face buried against the hollow of Craig's throat. Craig puts his hand on the back of Tweek's head and turns him toward the wall, sheltering him there, still nodding while Damien glowers at him.

"Oh, what's the point?" Pip says. "Let them go, Damien, all of them. This woman, too. I don't want some stolen baby."

"But it's mine!" Damien shouts, livid. "I thought that's all you wanted, something small and helpless that looks like me, something that binds this worthless half of a fucking soul to your world! To you! What more can I – what the fuck do I have to do – I've given you everything, I -"

"He wants you to fix it," Christophe says. "And that, too." He gestures to Eric, and Butters wraps his arms around Eric more tightly, leaning over him.

"Well, I can't!" Damien says. "I can't, Pip, you know what my powers are, I can't turn back time, and I certainly can't raise the fucking dead. So just take this baby and try to be happy-"

"Try to be happy? How could I be, knowing what you've done, this hole you've dug for yourself? What – what about your father?" Pip asks, lowering his voice. "He turned back time once before."

"Yes, once!" Damien says. "He gets to do that once, only once, and who did he do it for? Who, Pip? For fucking McCormick, of course! Doesn't McCormick owe us his sister, for that? His nephew, his niece – whatever the fuck she's got in there? It's fair! It's only fair, goddammit!"

"You're mad," Pip says, his voice breaking when he says so. "You've really gone mad."

"I did all of this for you!" Damien says, casting around for something to kick or to throw. He slams his pack of cigarettes down to the floor when he finds nothing. "How can you not see that?"

"That only makes it worse," Pip says, crying into his hands.

"Wait," Christophe says. "Stop staging this goddamn opera and listen to me, you pathetic fucking assholes."

"What?" Damien says. He's shaking with rage, looking murderous, and Butters can hear Tweek whimpering from across the room, Craig trying to shush him.

"You know," Christophe says, narrowing his eyes at Damien. "You're a lot like your father."

"That's – okay, alright-" Damien nods to himself and walks toward the cage. "Those wings are coming off. I'll rip them out of you with my bare fucking hands."

"Damien, no!" Pip sobs.

"I meant that as a compliment," Christophe says, smirking. "Hey, calm down, fireball. I've got a proposal for you. A way to fix this, maybe."

"You're a powerless house fly!" Damien shouts. He reaches the cage and grabs hold of the bars, snarling in Christophe's face. Christophe doesn't back away, still smiling.

"Alone, maybe," Christophe says. "But when is the last time an angel teamed up with a demon?"

"Never!" Damien says, scoffing at the idea.

"Precisely." Christophe shrugs and takes a few steps backward, letting Damien seethe. "So, hey, I'm thinking – what have we got to lose?"

"You've got nothing," Damien says. "I've got plenty."

"Have you?" Pip says.

Damien turns from Christophe to stare at Pip, and Butters doesn't want to recognize anything human in that monster, not after what he's done, but he sees a flash of it when Damien holds Pip's gaze, something trampled and small, mortal.

"Here," Pip says, and he bends down to pick up the pack of cigarettes that Damien threw on the floor. He's sniffling a little as he walks toward Christophe and Damien, sliding a cigarette from the pack. "You know, we can't get these here," Pip says as he steps forward and holds the cigarette out for Christophe. "It's one of those odd little things. He has to go to earth for them."

"Well," Christophe says. He seems stunned, and glances at Damien nervously as he reaches out to take the cigarette, but Damien looks as if he's barely noticed this exchange, his eyes unfocused. Christophe sticks the cigarette in his mouth, still watching Damien. "If there's anything I've learned about the afterlife, and God, and all of this shit," Christophe says, "It's that none of it makes any goddamn fucking sense."

"Quite right," Pip says sadly. "How did you die, then? It must have been before your ninth birthday?"

"Yes," Christophe says. He sniffs. "And not to speak ill of the recently dead, but it was actually his fault." He tips his chin toward Butters and Eric.

"Me?" Butters says, blinking fresh tears.

"Not you, _bouton__ d'or_," Christophe says. "But never mind. We were children, as you say, and we were innocent in a place that did us no favors for that. I was torn apart by dogs, but I think mine was actually not as bad as yours," he says, glancing at Pip, who is staring at Damien now. Pip seems to hear what Christophe has said and turns to him, frowning.

"Oh, mine," he says. "Well, it was quick. But I don't understand. How did you become an angel? If you were still young enough to have been baptized Mormon, your soul would have been recycled, wouldn't it?"

"There were certain circumstances," Christophe says. "Like the reset he's bitching about, the one McCormick asked for. I might have gone back like the others – it was offered. Like a fool, I accepted God's other offer. Kyle Broflovski, he, ah. He cared for me as I was dying, when no one else seemed to give a shit. And I was bitter about the world, not interested in returning, and I thought, idiotically, that the afterlife would be a place where things were fair, where I could make a real difference, where I would have the power to at least protect this one person who'd shown me some goddamn kindness while I bled to death." He scoffs and takes the cigarette from his lips, holding it out through the bars of his cage. "Ey," he says, to Damien. "Fireball. A light, maybe?"

Damien looks at him and frowns. Pip sighs.

"Just do it, love," he says, reaching out to touch Damien's hip. "It won't cost you anything."

"It'll cost me a goddamn cigarette," Damien says, muttering, but he opens his palm and holds a small fireball there, letting Christophe use it to light his cigarette. Butters wants to protest that this is all a waste of time, an impediment to him getting back to Eric, but he doesn't yet believe that angels have no power, and he's eager to see what will happen if Christophe manages to sweet talk these two into letting him out of that cage. He glances at the iron door, out at the hallway, waiting to see Eric rushing through it again, invincible this time, returned to him. Nothing comes, and he puts his head on Eric's chest, blinking tears against it when he realizes that he's listening for the heartbeat that's stopped, still trying to find it. He cups his hand around Eric's badge, and it's even colder than the rest of him.

"Ah, Jesus," Christophe says, reveling as he smokes. "That is fucking fantastic. It's so cruel, yeah? I'm dead, and still trapped in this cage."

"This cage is a relic," Damien says. "A real one. The only thing that can imprison an angel. My father stole it and hid it before he went to war against God. For obvious reasons."

"I wasn't talking about this cage," Christophe says. "I was talking about this fucking body. Look at me, shit. I even had to age, so that Kyle would think I was a real boy, like him. I had to let his fucking father psychoanalyze me."

"Well," Damien says. He takes the pack of cigarettes from Pip and slides the last one out, lighting it for himself. "You weren't a total failure," he says. "How did you. I mean. It was you who kept me from figuring out where he'd ended up after I wiped him, wasn't it?"

"Kyle?" Christophe shrugs. "I suppose. I wanted to protect him, but I had no instruction manual."

"Me either," Damien says. "I don't know what I'm doing half the fucking time," he says, looking at Pip. "Obviously, I guess."

"How did you finally find Kyle?" Christophe asks. "Or me, I suppose, since I'd sent him away by then."

"The same way you found the other one," Damien says. "I let my guard down. Karen was pregnant, and I thought, fuck. I thought I was almost home free. Jesus, if I could only kill McCormick, for good-"

"Oh, stop that," Pip says, putting his hands on Damien's chest. "You're always saying he exists just to torment you, but what if he's some kind of angel himself? Those are the sorts of things you can't kill, and maybe for a reason. This whole – struggle – your frustration with what your father did for him, your jealousy over his immortality – I think it's kept you human somehow."

Christophe snorts. "Maybe McCormick is your guardian, fireball."

"Both of you can shut the fuck up about that," Damien says, scowling. "If my guardian is a strung out ex-whore whose parents can't recall conceiving him because they were smoking crack at the time, I'm more damned that I thought. Anyway, what the fuck are we doing?" He looks at Christophe. "You said you had some kind of plan."

"Oh, darling," Pip says, giving him a tearful smile. "You're willing to try it?"

"If it's what you want," Damien says. He looks away from Pip, flicking ashes. "I don't know what else to do with my life. Half-life. Whatever it is. I don't want to conquer heaven and I don't give a shit about what goes on down here. I mean, I didn't. Until you came."

He looks up at Pip again, and Pip swoons toward him, smiling. Christophe blows smoke between their faces and they both wince, pulling away.

"No time for a farewell fuck," Christophe says. "My effie is dying, I can feel it."

"Your what?" Damien says, frowning.

"My effarig – Kyle," Christophe says. He sighs and throws his cigarette down, rolling it under his boot with a kind of gentle regret. "If he dies, I'm sucked up into heaven, finished here. Or maybe this cage would incinerate me, but I'd be made useless, either way. So we'd better work quick if we're going to try this."

"Try what?" Damien asks. "What's your plan?"

"Let me out of the cage," Christophe says.

Damien stares at him as if he's waiting to hear what step two of the plan will be, but Christophe says nothing. Butters sighs and looks across the room at Craig and Tweek, who are watching the cage, Tweek still wrapped up in Craig's coat, chewing anxiously on the point of his collar. Butters thinks of how hard their hearts must be beating, how they can both surely feel the other's pounding with their chests pressed together like that. He closes his eyes and rolls himself against Eric's side, cuddling up to him as if they're back at home together, in bed on a cold morning, but Eric's body offers no warmth, no steady heartbeat. The blood on the sheets and on Butters' jeans has begun to dry, and his legs stick together when he shifts them against Eric's side. He puts his face to Eric's cold, quiet throat and closes his eyes.

"You don't understand," Damien is saying to Christophe, or maybe to Pip; Butters can hardly make himself care. He feels so tired, ready to die, stuck in a room full of people who don't seem interested in killing him. "The consequences-"

"Nobody here knows what the consequences will be," Christophe says. "And I'll be the first to tell you that God is not often fair, but look at what he did for McCormick when he acted selflessly on behalf of South Park."

"You mean what my father did!"

"Oh, and who gave your father that power, eh? His creator, maybe?"

"Please, darling," Pip says.

"Stop calling me that! And think about what you're asking. Having an angel here, unguarded – my father's entire empire could crumble."

"You hate your father!"

"Well – but – what about, I mean, the universe-"

"Oh, Damien, listen to yourself! You don't care about the universe much, either, I don't think."

"Okay, but – you – I mean, you're in it-"

"We're running out of time!" Christophe says. "Kyle Broflovski is gasping his last breaths up in fucking Hell's Pass! I suspect you can feel that, too, since it was your fucked up spell that saved him. So what will it be, fireball? What are you going to do?"

Butters is afraid to open his eyes. He can hear Damien growling in frustration, Pip muttering to him softly, begging, and Craig and Tweek speaking to each other on the other side of the room, almost too low to hear, saying _whatever__happens_ and _I_ _know_, _I_ _know_.

"Just remember," Damien says. "If this doesn't work, and Broflovski dies, you lose those wings and I can destroy you."

"Really, you're still giving me threats? You've already shredded my corporeal form once, haven't you? Or was that some other poor soul who you left to bleed to death all over my flat?"

"No, no!" Pip says. "That was an illusion, all based in memories. He's never killed anyone! Not until-"

"We have only a few seconds now!" Christophe shouts. "Decide!"

Damien groans, and Butters pinches his eyes shut tight against Eric's neck when he hears the sound of metal crunching and twisting, as if Damien doesn't have time for a key and is ripping the door of the cage off wholesale. He hears Tweek scream, then realizes it's not Tweek, it's a shrieking sound that fills the whole room, like a semi truck slamming on its brakes, too late to avoid impact. Even from behind his closed eyelids, Butters can see the light, brighter than anything his body can shut out. He whimpers and holds onto Eric as a powerful wind starts to blow against them, but he knows it's hopeless; they'll be sucked apart.

"I'll find you again," Butters whispers, hiding the words against Eric's skin. "I promise, I swear."

Butters is jerked backward almost as soon as he's gotten the words out, flung away from Eric, blind and weightless, and he feels as real and significant as a blade of grass in a tornado. He wonders if it was like this for Stan and Kyle as his memories are ripped from him one by one, in rapid succession, too quickly gone to mourn. He snatches at things when he can: Russian wedding cookies, his black boots with the tassels, that trip to Texas when Eric let Butters sleep with his head on his thigh for two hours, stretched across the front seat in the Hummer, the way Eric rubbed his thumb behind Butters' ear and muttered song lyrics along with the radio. These things slip from between his fingers until everything is gone, and he turns away from the disaster of the evaporated universe, curls into himself and tries to remember what he thought he would miss about any of that, knowing that he lost something but unable to recall the shape of what was once in his arms. He only knows they're empty now.


	21. Chapter 21

Stan gets into bed after the funeral, not bothering to take off his suit or his shoes. His cheeks are raw and itchy from crying, and his chest feels shredded, like something that's barely being held together by scotch tape. He hates crying and wants to stop, but he's still sniffling a little, shaking with the aftershocks of the sobs that he held in during the funeral. He thinks about the liquor bottle that's hidden under the bed, but he's too exhausted to even push himself up onto an elbow so he can root for it. He hears footsteps out in the hallway and puts his pillow over his face.

"What?" he calls when someone knocks, his voice muffled.

"It's me, dude. Can I come in?"

Stan doesn't answer, but the door opens anyway, and closes again. Kyle doesn't put the lights on, and doesn't open the blinds when he walks over to the bed. He sits down beside Stan and puts his hand on his shoulder.

"Hey," he says, and Stan wants to curse at him for the softness of his voice, because it's making Stan's eyes leak again. "You okay?" Kyle asks, his hand sliding down over Stan's arm, to his wrist.

"I'm fine," Stan says, mumbling. He's not, but Kyle knows that, and a dumb question deserves an insincere answer. Stan wipes at his eyes and nose, and when he rolls onto his back Kyle offers his partially used handkerchief.

"I can't believe you have this," Stan says miserably, sitting up to blow his nose into it.

"My grandma makes them for me," Kyle says. He points to the monogrammed initials on the corner and Stan shakes his head.

"This is the gayest thing ever," Stan says, managing a smile when he looks up from the handkerchief, his thumb moving over the hand-stitched initials. Kyle's eyes are sad but dry, and Stan is jealous. Kyle only ever seems to cry over stupid shit, and when things are truly fucked up he gets strong and quiet, offering handkerchiefs. He's still wearing his funeral clothes, too, though he's lost his jacket somewhere and loosened his tie.

"Dude, it's okay," Kyle says, reaching up to dry Stan's eyes with his fingertips when they leak again, the handkerchief closed into Stan's fist.

"It's not okay," Stan says, leaning away from Kyle's hand. "Kenny is dead. He's gone, Kyle, forever, and it's my fault."

"What?" Kyle's eyebrows shoot up. "How can you think that?"

"How could I not think that?" Stan's face pinches up again, and he covers it with Kyle's snotty handkerchief. "I didn't save him."

"Goddammit, dude," Kyle says, softly. "You're so-" He huffs instead of finishing that statement, and Stan turns away from him, lying down on the bed again. He hopes Kyle won't leave, but he doesn't want to ask him to stay. Kyle doesn't need to be asked. Stan hears Kyle's shoes thumping against the bedroom floor, one after the other, and Kyle sighs as he curls up behind Stan, putting his chin on Stan's shoulder and slipping his arm under Stan's, hugging him closer. It's been awhile since they did this, and though it feels good, Stan is afraid it will make him start crying again. Nothing makes him more upset than other people's attempts to comfort him. He threads his fingers through Kyle's and holds Kyle's hand against his chest.

"You left the party," Stan says, his voice hoarse. He rubs his face dry against the pillow.

"The party sucked," Kyle says. "It's not even a party, really. It's just - depressing. Poor Karen."

"God," Stan says, sighing. "This is so fucked up, dude."

"I know." Kyle's breath is warm on the side of Stan's neck, and he smells a little bit like the dry cookies that people were nibbling at the reception. Stan takes a deep breath and lets it out. He smiles tiredly when he feels Kyle do the same, Kyle's chest expanding against his back.

"I wish I could have done something," Stan says. "Fuck, I wish I could do something now. I feel so useless."

"Yeah," Kyle says. His fingers flex between Stan's, and he shifts a little, tilting Stan back against him as he makes himself more comfortable. He's always fidgety when they do this. "Hey, you want to hear something weird, speaking of Karen?"

"What?"

"At the funeral, I saw someone talking to her, this kid I'd never seen before. It was when we were going to the cars, and she was sort of alone over by this big oak tree, so I thought I should make sure she was okay, but when I got there I saw this kid with her, giving her a flower."

"Well." Stan shrugs. "That was nice of him. What's so weird about that?"

"I don't know, just. Who the fuck was he? You know? We know everybody in town, right? Like, everybody who would actually show up to Kenny's funeral, at least."

"Maybe he was their cousin or something."

"I don't think so. He didn't come to the reception, and he didn't really look like a McCormick. He had black hair, and he was wearing all black, which was kinda weird."

"How is it kinda weird to wear black to a funeral?" Stan rolls onto his back, still holding Kyle's hand against his chest. "You wore black, dude."

"Yeah, but my shirt is white," Kyle says, raising his eyebrows and tugging on his collar. "And my tie is blue. I don't know, there was just something off about that kid. He looked sort of evil."

"Evil? I thought you said he was giving her a flower?"

"He was, but. In a weird way? Never mind," Kyle says, groaning and resting his head next to Stan's on the pillow. Stan still has Kyle's handkerchief closed in his fist, his other hand wrapped around Kyle's and resting in the dip between his ribs. He stares at the inactive glow-in-the-dark stars on the bedroom ceiling and wonders if Kenny is in heaven.

"We're all gonna have to look out for Karen from now on," Stan says. "It's what Kenny would have wanted."

"Yep."

Kyle is quiet for a while, and Stan looks over at him to see if he's fallen asleep. He hasn't; he tips his face up toward Stan's curiously.

"What?" Kyle says, and now Stan can smell the Dr. Pepper on his breath, too.

"Nothing," Stan says, muttering. He lets go of Kyle's hand and passes him the handkerchief. His eyes have finally grown dry, and he knows it's because of Kyle and his random fixation on black-clad boys with flowers, Kyle with his fussy handkerchiefs and inability to conceive of the idea that Stan could be responsible for what happened to Kenny. Kyle is still looking at him like he's waiting for him to have something more to say, but he doesn't seem impatient, just curious. Stan's got something lodged in his throat, something that wouldn't come out right if he tried to put it into words. He wants to tell Kyle that he's glad he's alive, that he's here, but maybe Kyle already knows that.

"I think I hear your parents," Kyle says, and Stan is so lost in his thoughts that it takes him a moment to figure out what Kyle is talking about, but then hears it, too, his parents' car in the driveway, doors opening and closing. Kyle sits up and tucks his handkerchief into the back pocket of his pants.

"You don't have to go," Stan says, panicked at the thought of being alone in this room again, with that liquor bottle and his guilt about Kenny.

"I know," Kyle says. "I'm just, um." He looks at Stan and shrugs, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Kyle doesn't like to get caught lying in bed with him. If he moves into Stan's bed from his sleeping bag during the night, he always makes sure to relocate before dawn.

"Boys?" Stan's mother calls, and she knocks lightly before opening the door and poking her head inside. Kyle waves, and Stan stays stretched out on his back in bed, regarding her listlessly.

"Is the reception over?" Kyle asks. It was hosted at the Broflovski house; the McCormick residence isn't in any state to receive guests.

"Yes, for the most part," Stan's mother says. She pushes the door open more widely and leans against the frame, sighing. "Did you boys get anything to eat?"

"I had some cookies," Kyle says. He turns to Stan and nudges him. "Dude? Did you eat?"

"Yeah," Stan says, though he didn't. He can see that neither his mother nor Kyle believes him, both of them giving him irritated looks.

"Well, your father is going to Burger King," his mother says. "I'll have him get you both something, unless you're going home for dinner, Kyle?"

"I'll stay here," Kyle says. "Thanks, Mrs. Marsh."

"Oh, honey, you're welcome." She walks into the room and bends down to kiss Kyle's forehead. "Stanley," she says, reaching over to touch his hair. He winces and leans away from her hand, embarrassed by his red-rimmed eyes.

"What?" he says when she stands there with her hands on her hips, regarding him sadly.

"Nothing," she says. "I was just thinking, ah. How much I love you." She's becoming emotional, probably thinking of Kenny's mother. Stan looks down at his chest, and his mother sighs heavily before leaving the room. She leaves the door open, which Stan finds annoying.

"Dude, tell your mom you love her," Kyle says, though she's gone, walking downstairs. Stan grunts.

"She knows I do," he says.

"Yeah, but, like. Our moms are freaking out, about Kenny and everything. Mine keeps baking all this Jewish shit nonstop, and she never bakes. She usually just gets that stuff from Fleischman's. It's weird."

"How come you're not freaking out?" Stan asks, though it's one of those dumb questions, something he already knows the answer to. Kyle freaks out more quietly than Stan does, at least when it comes to the big stuff.

"I don't even know if it's hit me yet," Kyle says. "When we go back to school on Monday and he's not there – maybe then. Goddammit, Kenny," he says, softly.

"I was with him," Stan says, his sore eyes stinging again.

"I know you were, dude."

"I could have saved him."

"Stan." Kyle closes his eyes. He looks paler than normal, and tired. "Don't make this about you."

"Fuck you, dude, you weren't there!"

"I know!" Kyle glares at him. "I wish I had been. Maybe then you could blame me instead of yourself."

Stan scoffs. "Why would you rather have me blame you?"

"'Cause I hate seeing you like this! It's just gonna-" Kyle moans and trails off, scowling down at his socks.

"It's gonna what?"

"It's gonna make you all dark and cynical again," Kyle says. "I mean. Maybe. I don't know. Never mind."

"Maybe I never stopped being dark and cynical," Stan says. He wishes his bedroom door were shut. He can hear the TV from down in the living room, and Shelly running the water in the hall bathroom.

"But," Kyle says, staring down at his hands, picking at his nails. "You've been, like. Better, I thought."

"I guess you don't know everything about me," Stan says, and he hates himself for doing this, because he doesn't want to get mad at Kyle, doesn't want to push him away again, not now when he needs him more than ever. It's just fucking infuriating, all the things Kyle doesn't understand, and how hopeless Stan feels whenever he tries to explain.

"I'm gonna go wash up," Kyle says, standing. "For dinner."

Stan scoffs, as if Kyle's obsession with having clean hands before meals is another indicator that he doesn't get it and never will. He knows he's being a dick, but acting like this feels better than acknowledging the thing that's welling in his chest, making his eyes leak again as Kyle leaves the room. He can hear the bathroom door open and shut across the hall, the water running. Though his bedroom door is open, Stan gets down on his hands and knees and roots around under the bed until he finds the neck of the latest bottle he's been able to procure. His vision blurs as he sits on the floor with his back to his bed, holding the bottle against his folded legs. Kenny got this for him. They were drinking from a different stash the day Kenny died, something that belonged to Kenny's father, stolen sips before they walked to the arcade. Stan didn't even feel that drunk, just good, laughing at everything, his shoulder bumping into Kenny's as they crossed the street. It was the kind of high that made him feel invincible, and Kenny seemed to be feeling it, too, smiling easily and jingling the coins in his pocket as they walked.

They weren't paying attention, because they were floating, enjoying the fake happiness that felt real at the time, and the world didn't seem like the kind of place where a car could come hurtling out of nowhere and barrel over a ten-year-old kid before anyone knew what the fuck was happening. Stan fell onto his ass on the side of the road. Kenny had pushed him out of the way, saved him. Stan was too drunk to pull Kenny along with him, too drunk to do anything but sit there in the muddy snow and ask everyone who tried to help him where Kenny was, because the bloody heap in the middle of the road couldn't be him.

He walks into the bathroom without knocking, holding the bottle of Jack by its neck. Kyle is only drying his hands, but he still looks a little offended when Stan barges in. Then he sees the bottle, and his eyes go wide.

"Dude!" he says, frowning. "What the fuck is that?"

"This is what got Kenny killed," Stan says. He's starting to cry again, but just a little, just in his eyes, his voice steady. "This is why I couldn't save him."

"Stan-" Kyle is frozen with the towel in his hands, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. His eyes are still dry, but he looks broken, horrified.

"So," Stan says. He sniffles and spins the top off the bottle. "Anyway." He upturns it in the sink, and the neck of the bottle fits perfectly in the drain. It's quickly empty. Stan looks up at Kyle again, though he's afraid that Kyle's shock will have hardened into disgust. Kyle reaches around Stan to push the bathroom door completely shut, and he pulls Stan into his arms.

"No, no," Kyle says, squeezing him. "It wasn't your fault."

"_Kyle_."

"It wasn't, I don't care. It just wasn't."

"You don't even know how terrible I am," Stan says. He chokes up a painful sob that he's been trying to hold in all day and grabs the back of Kyle's shirt, fisting it with both hands. Kyle sighs, and Stan can feel it against his neck.

"You're not terrible," Kyle says. "Stan, Jesus, you're so good. Don't you know, like. That's why you feel like this. Because you're good and the world sucks sometimes. A lot of the time, maybe. If I was as good as you are, I'd be sad about it, too."

"Oh, fuck that," Stan says, wiping his face on Kyle's neck. "You're good. You're better."

Kyle laughs and rubs Stan's back. They stay like that for a long time, holding on to each other, and Stan feels stupidly glad for how solid Kyle is, for his heartbeat, the scratch of his frizzy hair against Stan's temple, and for every breath Kyle takes as their chests press together. Stan pulls back when he hears his mother returning, the front door slamming shut and fast food bags crinkling downstairs. Kyle looks up at him, his hands sliding down to Stan's waist.

"I love you, okay?" Stan says. "For real."

"Yeah, I know," Kyle says, and his eyes finally get wet, but just a little. He laughs nervously and looks away, blinking. "Me too. I - you-"

"I know," Stan says, because Kyle is embarrassed. "Let's go eat."

Kyle goes downstairs while Stan washes his face, hides the empty liquor bottle in his room and changes out of his funeral clothes. He puts on a pair of flannel sleep pants and a Rockies t-shirt that he caught from one of those t-shirt cannons at a game. It's gotten dark outside, and the house is too cold for bare feet, so he pulls on some socks before padding downstairs. Kyle is in the kitchen with Stan's father, both of them eating their cheeseburgers at the counter and talking about Tim Tebow.

"Hey, champ, how's it going?" Stan's father says when he sees him. He's been calling Stan 'champ' ever since Kenny died, for some reason. Stan shrugs and stands beside Kyle, stealing some of his french fries.

"Your dad was saying that he'll take you to the Super Bowl if the Broncos make it," Kyle says, nudging Stan while he eats fries. "I'd be so jealous, dude."

"You could come," Stan says, talking with his mouth full.

"Now, Stanley," his father says, laughing nervously. "Those tickets aren't cheap."

"I'm not going without Kyle," Stan says. "If they even make it."

"Someone's a little grouchy, huh?" his father says, and then he seems to realize how stupid that statement is, given the present circumstances, and leaves for the TV room, where Stan's mother and Shelly are watching The Amazing Race.

"Dude, let him take you to the Super Bowl," Kyle says as Stan unwraps a cheeseburger. "I mean, Jesus."

"He's full of shit," Stan says. "But I was serious. If I did get to go? I would, like. Never go without you, dude."

"Why not?" Kyle asks, grinning.

Stan shrugs. "It wouldn't be fun without you."

"You're crazy," Kyle says, but he's still smiling, dragging a french fry through a puddle of ketchup.

Kyle's mother shows up half an hour later, barking at him for bailing on the post-reception cleanup. Stan begs to have permission for Kyle to spend the night, but their mothers are both against it.

"Kyle can spend the night next weekend, Stanley," Sheila says, already pulling Kyle out the door by his sleeve. "It's a time to be with family, really. Kyle, where is your jacket?"

"I don't know," Kyle says. "Somewhere at home." He looks back at Stan as she pulls him down the front walk. It's snowing, and Stan's mother is standing behind him at the door, her hands on his shoulders.

"You better not have lost that jacket!" Sheila says. "Honestly, Kyle, sometimes I wonder why I even bother to buy you nice things. Thanks again for giving him dinner, Sharon!" she calls while Kyle stands near the passenger side door of her car, looking aggravated. He waves, and Stan waves back, something falling open inside his chest, important stuff spilling out. He won't be able to sleep tonight, not without a drink before bed. Not without Kyle.

"C'mon, sweetheart," Stan's mother says, drawing him into the house.

Stan goes to bed early and stares at the rug on his bedroom floor. Just a few weeks ago, Kenny stretched out there and worked on their report on Thanksgiving. Stan watches that spot on the carpet, wondering if he'd like to see Kenny's ghost or not. It would be scary, and he's got the blankets pulled up to his chin at the thought, shivering beneath them, but if Kenny was just like his old self and they could talk, he'd like that. He rolls toward the window and pulls his pillow down against his chest, hugging it and pretending it's Kyle.

"Dude," Stan says to his pillow, but it's not really Kyle, so he gets no response. He's been especially weird about the Kyle thing since Kenny died. He hates being away from him; it hurts.

Stan's mother comes into the room in the middle of the night, and Stan acts like he's sleeping, his arms and legs still clamped around the pillow. His mother strokes his hair and sighs.

"Sharon?" his father says after a while, from the doorway.

"Shh!" she says. "I'm coming. I just couldn't sleep. Oh, Randy. That little coffin – through that whole service, all I could think was, 'what if it was my baby in there, in that box?'"

"Sharon, c'mon. Stan's okay. You're gonna wake him up."

"I know, I'm coming."

She kisses Stan's cheek and tiptoes out. Stan opens his eyes against the pillow, trying to decide if he still wishes it had been him pushing Kenny out of the way, being the hero and dying for a good cause. He wonders if Kyle would have been quiet like he was at Kenny's funeral, sad but dry-eyed, passing Kenny that handkerchief while they stared at Stan's coffin. Probably not. Stan tries to imagine what he would be like at Kyle's funeral, and squeezes himself more tightly around the pillow, closing his eyes. He wouldn't even go to Kyle's funeral. No one could make him. He'd go to heaven, or hell, wherever Kyle was, and would tear the place apart until he found him. Nothing could stop him, not even God. He feels confident of that as he falls asleep.

On the way to the bus stop on Monday, Stan is in a terrible mood. It will be Christmas in just three weeks, and even the decorations people have put up are on his nerves. He's tempted to rip some tinsel off of someone's mail box, but he stops himself before he can. Once he's gotten far enough from his house, he takes the empty bottle of Jack out of his book bag and throws it in a stranger's recycling bin.

Kyle and Cartman are already there when Stan arrives, and they're already arguing about some goddamn thing. Stan stares at the spot where Kenny should be standing and tunes them out.

"Hey," Kyle says, tugging on Stan's elbow. "I'm right, aren't I? About Columbia?"

"About what?" Stan says.

"British Columbia is in Canada, right? It's not some fucking _colony_ in the actual Columbia in South America."

"Yes huh it is!" Cartman says. "Hey, here comes Butters. He'll tell you I'm right."

"Oh, like that means anything!" Kyle says. Stan withholds a groan, and Kyle seems to notice. "You okay?" he asks under his breath as Cartman assaults Butters with the question about Columbia in lieu of a greeting.

"I'm great, Kyle," Stan says. "Just great."

"Stan-"

"Well, hey, fellas!" Butters says, inserting himself. He's wearing an over-sized coat that makes him look especially tiny, and a knit hat with braided tassels that makes him look especially gay. "How're you doing?"

"We're fine," Kyle answers before Stan can say anything. "Just, you know. First day back without-"

"Tell them, Butters!" Cartman says, grabbing Butters by the shoulders and giving him a shake. "Tell them I'm right!"

"Oh - well - Eric." Butters blushes and chews his lip. "I don't think you are, actually-"

"Bullcrap! Jesus, what am I even asking you retards for? You guys don't know anything about the British settlement in Columbia. That's where all the old school opium dealers live."

"Why the hell are you so obsessed with opium dealers all of a sudden?" Kyle asks, shouting. Stan can see the bus approaching in the distance, and he makes himself stare at the ground and count to twenty before he can lose it and tell all of them to shut the fuck up about things that don't matter. Cartman is going off on some tangent about how he's going to be a big time opium dealer someday, and have a harem, and live on a yacht.

"I'm feeling pretty sad today, too," Butters says, softly enough so that only Stan will hear. Kyle and Cartman are both shouting at each other, and the bus is thundering up the street, making Stan's heart clench the way any approaching vehicle has since Kenny died.

"It's not fair," Stan says, muttering, wishing he had something more profound to say about the fact that Kenny isn't with them.

"It sure isn't," Butters says, and Stan doesn't protest when Butters pats his back.

On the bus, Stan sits against the window and Kyle sits beside him, as always. Butters and Cartman are behind them, Butters interviewing Cartman about what kind of yacht he'll have when he grows up. Kyle tugs his vocab book out of his backpack, flipping to the chapter that they'll be quizzed on later today.

"Cartman is so fucking stupid," he says. "Here." He points to a word in the book. "Obtuse. That's Cartman." He looks up at Stan, and Stan lets his head thump back against the seat before meeting Kyle's eyes. Kyle elbows him. "I know, dude," he says, quietly. "But, like. What do you want me to do?"

"Be more depressed about this," Stan says, though he doesn't really want that at all. Kyle closes his vocab book and folds his hands over it.

"Okay," he says. "You know what I did this morning? I made an extra sandwich in case Kenny's druggie parents forgot to pack one for Karen. We should find her at lunch and make sure she has something to eat."

"That's a good idea," Stan says, and his eyes sting, but only a little, and more because of Kyle than Kenny or Karen or her potential lack of a lunch. He smiles and pokes his elbow into Kyle's side. "Sorry," he says.

"For what?"

"I don't know. For wanting to rip tinsel off of mailboxes."

"Oh, God, I want to do that every year," Kyle says, muttering. "Fucking _Christmas_." But he must know what Stan really means, because he settles his shoulder against Stan's and leaves it there for the remainder of the bus ride. Stan tries to be a good sport, pretending to listen while Kyle reviews the vocab words for him.

At school, Wendy gives Stan a sympathy card, with the caveat that her mom picked it out, and that she didn't really know Kenny.

"He never talked to me," she says, looking uncomfortable. "But he was your friend, and I'm really sorry, Stan."

"He thought you were pretty," Stan says, though Kenny's actual words had been more like 'fuckin' hot' or something to that effect. Wendy blushes and actually seems to be at a loss for words, which is a rare phenomenon.

"Well," she says, quietly. "It's sad." She gives Stan an awkward hug and retreats to the other side of the room, where the girls are hanging up their coats.

Stan almost definitely flunks the vocab quiz, and at lunch he has no appetite, but the thought of maybe helping Karen out lifts his spirits a little. On the way to the cafeteria Cartman is ranting that someone stole his lunch, accusing everyone in sight and rallying Butters to help him solve the mystery of his missing lunch bag.

"Inspector Butters is on the case!" Butters announces, delighted. Craig Tucker is quickly there to trip him and call him a fag. Stan considers darting to Butters' defense, since Kenny would have if he were alive, but Cartman is already giving Craig a wedgie and telling him that he's the one who's a fag, so: problem solved. Stan takes Kyle's elbow and pulls him away from the others.

"Let's go find Karen," Stan says, and Kyle nods.

They can't find her in the lunch room, and when Kyle asks the second grade girls if Karen showed up to school today, they just stare at him, wide-eyed and terrified. Kyle groans and pulls Stan along with him toward the library.

"Sometimes the librarian lets the depressed kids eat in there," Kyle says. Stan raises his eyebrows.

"How do you know that?" he asks.

"I don't know," Kyle says, muttering. "Here, c'mon. There she is."

Karen is seated toward the back, at one of the private carousels, and as they approach Stan can see she's in no need of a lunch. She's got quite a spread: string cheese and a thermos full of what looks like chocolate milk, Doritos, a salami sandwich on a fancy white roll, and two Fruit Roll Ups. Kyle glances at Stan, and he's obviously thinking the same thing: this is Cartman's usual lunch. Karen is the one who took it.

"Um, hey Karen," Kyle says, and she looks up from the string cheese she was peeling. She's not crying, which is a good sign, and she smiles shyly as they pull chairs over to sit down beside her. "Want some company?" Kyle asks.

"I guess," she says, shrinking a little. "Miss Holman said I could eat in here."

"Yeah, it's fine," Kyle says. "I like to eat in here sometimes, too. Um. Looks like you've got a pretty tasty lunch there."

Stan wants to groan and tell Kyle to leave it alone. Karen's brother just died; if she wants to steal Cartman's lunch, Stan is all for it. Karen blushes and puts the string cheese down.

"Uh-huh," she says.

"Look, if you ever need a lunch, me and Stan could-"

"Kyle," Stan says, kicking him.

"What?"

"It's okay," Karen says. "I got someone to give me lunches already."

"You do?" Kyle says, eyebrows going up. "Um, who?"

Karen looks at Stan, then back to Kyle, the pink on her cheeks deepening.

"I'm not supposed to say," she says, her voice coming out in the barest whisper.

"Oh," Kyle looks at Stan. "Um, it wouldn't happen to be that boy from the funeral, would it? The one in all black? Who gave you the flower?"

"You saw that?" Karen asks, looking frightened. Stan groans.

"Kyle, Jesus, what are you doing?"

"Nothing," Kyle says, frowning at him. He looks back to Karen. "Just - I was wondering, who was that boy?"

"He's my new guardian angel," Karen says, still whispering. "I'm not supposed to tell anybody, though. You can't tell!"

"I won't tell," Kyle says. "Did he get this lunch for you?"

"Yeah."

"Does he live here in South Park?" Kyle asks.

"I'm not supposed to talk about him," Karen says, looking like she'll cry. Stan takes hold of Kyle's arm and squeezes hard.

"Do you want Kyle to leave you alone?" Stan asks Karen.

"Stan!"

Karen looks back and forth between them and nods, sniffling.

"See, okay." Stan gets up, pulling Kyle with him. "Just know that if you need anything, me and Kyle made a kind of promise to Kenny to take care of you, so we're here for you, okay?"

"Okay, but." Karen puts her finger on the string cheese and rolls it around on the desktop. "I have my new angel and everything."

"He referred to himself as an angel?" Kyle says, frowning.

"We're leaving now," Stan says, loud enough to get the attention of Miss Holman, who is at the front desk. "Just remember, if you need us, we're around."

Karen nods and turns back to her lunch. Stan leads Kyle out of the library, still holding his arm, ignoring his scoffs of protestation.

"Stan, what the hell!" Kyle says when they're out in the hallway.

"Dude, it's that poor kid's first day back at school since her brother died, and we're scary older kids-"

"She knows us!"

"Sort of, but, man, you were like, interrogating her."

"I was not! Those were simple questions - and who the hell is this creep, huh? Kenny would want us to find out! He was older, Stan, maybe even older than us, and he could be preying on her or something."

"I agree that it's weird," Stan says. He lets go of Kyle's arm and sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We'll keep an eye on her, definitely. But just let her be for now, Jesus."

"I don't like this," Kyle says, frowning. "This whole thing. See, I knew something was weird. I just knew it, when I saw that kid."

"Yeah, congratulations, Kyle. You knew it. Maybe he just has a crush on her and wants to be nice."

"A crush! She's like, an infant, practically! That's, like, the worst possible explanation for what this kid is doing!"

"Kyle, Jesus Christ."

Stan is accustomed to being the voice of reason when Kyle overreacts to something, but throughout the day, the more he thinks about it, the more bothered he is by this situation himself. What troubles him most is how exactly this kid managed to sneak into the fourth grade classroom and get Cartman's lunch out of his backpack without being noticed.

"He must be a fifth grader," Stan says when he's walking to the buses with Kyle.

"Huh?"

"This kid who's telling Karen that he's her guardian angel," Stan says, his mouth quirking as he hears himself say that out loud: yeah, something is definitely wrong here. "He must be in fifth grade, if you said he looked like our age or older and you'd never seen him before."

"How do you know he even goes to our school?" Kyle asks. "The lunch thing?"

"Yes, Kyle, the lunch thing. How the fuck did he manage to steal Cartman's lunch?"

"I don't know," Kyle says. "It's been bothering me all day. Let's go home and look at your yearbook from last year. Maybe I can figure out who the hell this kid is."

"Kay. Also, um." Stan tugs on the straps of his book bag. "You know what else has been bothering me all day?"

"What?"

"When did you eat by yourself in the library?" Stan stops walking, and Kyle does, too, though he won't meet Stan's eyes. "Where the hell was I?"

"I don't know," Kyle says. "It was, like. One of those days when you'd sit there with us and just stare down at your food and not listen to anything I said." He looks up at Stan and quickly glances away again. "Anyway, who cares? C'mon, hurry, or we're gonna have to sit up front with the first graders."

They're both quiet for most of the bus ride home, Kyle with his nose buried in the reading assignment for their Literature unit and Stan staring out the window, trying to figure out why some weird kid would want to pretend to be Karen McCormick's guardian angel. He's also trying not to think too much about that day when he was so absorbed in his own misery that he didn't even notice Kyle leaving the lunch table and taking sanctuary in the library. Kyle didn't press him to talk about the bottle of Jack that he dumped down the bathroom sink, and Stan will return the favor, but he feels like he should make it up to Kyle somehow.

"How's the book?" Stan asks when they've split from the others, headed toward Stan's house. Kyle looks over at him and frowns.

"What book?"

"Uh. The one you were reading on the bus. You seemed pretty into it."

"Oh." Kyle shrugs. "It's okay. It's just, you know. For school. We have a test over it at the end of the week - you'll have to read it, too."

"Or you could just tell me about it," Stan says.

"You're so lazy," Kyle says, but he's grinning, and Stan knows he actually likes stretching out in Stan's bed and making him laugh with the details of the plot of whatever stupid book they're supposed to read for class that week. It's become a kind of tradition.

When they get to Stan's house his mother is already home from work, which is rare, and she's made cookies for them, which almost never happens. She touches Stan's hair a lot while he sits at the table with Kyle, dunking cookies in milk, and Stan allows it, thinking of what she said when she came into his room last night.

"Maybe I should start picking you boys up from the bus stop," she says. "Would you like that, when it's cold out like this?"

"Not really," Stan says. He looks up at her, guiltily. "But, um, thanks for offering."

"I can't believe how grown up you boys are getting," she says, tearfully, and she leaves the kitchen. Stan glances at Kyle, who shrugs.

"Let's go look at the yearbook," he says.

They can't find any fifth or fourth graders who look like the boy Kyle saw at Kenny's funeral. Kyle even tries the third graders, but there's nobody there, either.

"I knew it," Kyle says, closing the yearbook. They're sitting on the floor by Stan's bed, their knees bent and the yearbook propped against them, half on Stan's leg and half on Kyle's. "I knew he didn't go to our school. I would have seen him at least once during the year. He was really noticeable."

"Why don't you do like, a police sketch of him?" Stan suggests.

"Because it would just be a stick figure with black hair. You know I can't draw."

"Well, what the hell was so noticeable about him?"

"He looked - I don't know! Dark!"

"In that he was wearing all black?"

"Yeah, smart ass, but there was something else, too." Kyle groans and lets his legs slide down to the floor, setting the yearbook aside. "I should go," he says. "My mom will be pissed. It's almost five."

"Don't go," Stan says. "Stay until six."

"Stan, I'm gonna get in trouble," Kyle says, but he stays, and spends the next hour telling Stan about the book he's supposed to be reading for class. It's called _The_ _Indian_ _in_ _the_ _Cupboard_, and it sounds especially stupid. Stan is red-faced from laughing, lying on his back with Kyle beside him on the bed. Kyle is on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, and he's laughing, too, obviously pleased that Stan finds this so entertaining.

"So now this fucking, like, possessed Indian toy is asking for a _bride_," Kyle says, with such disgust that Stan laughs again. "I mean, is that really fucking dark or is it just me? Is he going to impregnate a Barbie against her will or something?"

Stan rolls against Kyle, cracking up, because only Kyle would be worried about the moral implications in this situation.

"Stanley?" His mother is at the door, knocking. "Kyle's mom is on the phone, she wants him home for dinner."

"I'm coming, Mrs. Marsh!" Kyle calls. He moans and flops down completely, putting his chin against Stan's mattress. "My mom's gonna yell at me when I get home," he says.

"Sorry, dude. Thanks for telling me about the book."

"It's the worst book ever!" Kyle says, sitting up. "I mean, the Indian is a fucking asshole! All he does is whine and bitch. Even the Cowboy is better, and, like, do I really want to be rooting for a moron cowboy over an oppressed Native American? No!"

"What should we do about Karen?" Stan asks when Kyle slides off the bed to put his boots on.

"I say we follow her home from school tomorrow," Kyle says. "Maybe she'll meet up with this kid, and we can confront him or something."

"Does he seem like someone whose ass we could kick?"

Kyle thinks about this for a moment, pausing with the laces on his left boot straightened out, one in each hand.

"If it was two against one, we could take him" Kyle says. "As long as he's not some kind of wizard."

Stan snorts. "Some kind of wizard?"

"Well, Jesus, I still can't figure out how he got that lunch out of Cartman's bag! Cartman guards that shit like a fucking attack dog."

"Okay, so we follow him and try to figure out if he's a wizard or not before we jump him," Stan says. He moans and rolls onto his back again. "Except, fuck, I can't do it tomorrow. I have football practice."

"I'll go tomorrow and scope things out," Kyle says. "What time does your practice end?"

"Pretty early. Like, four."

"Okay, so meet me at Stark's Pond at four thirty, and I'll tell you what I found out. Then we can decide what to do." Kyle stands up, his boots laced. He looks kind of proud of himself.

"What?" Stan asks, smiling at the look on Kyle's face.

"Nothing," Kyle says. He picks his jacket up off the floor and shrugs it on. "Just. You're gonna think I'm a baby or whatever, but I kind of missed, like. When me and you would, um. Solve mysteries and stuff."

"I don't think you're a baby," Stan says. He sits up on the bed. "Look, I'm sorry about everything. I'm sorry I was a jerk to you, I'm sorry I was selfish and got Kenny killed-"

"Stan, fuck!" Kyle looks like he wants to hit him, which has the odd effect of dramatically improving Stan's mood, because there's something harmless and endearing about Kyle's fury when it's directed toward him. "Quit saying that! You didn't kill Kenny, the driver of that car did!" Kyle groans and drills his palms into his eyes. "I gotta go. See you at the bus stop tomorrow?"

"Yeah, dude. I'll be there."

Kyle stands there for a moment, the irritation on his face softening into a pleading look that Stan can't really interpret. Stan wonders if he should get up and do something gay like hug Kyle or zip up his jacket for him, but before he can do anything Kyle waves and walks out of the room, leaving the door open when he goes.

At school the next day, Cartman's lunch goes missing again, and he's on the warpath, rabid with accusations. Butters offers to share his bag lunch, and Cartman slaps it out of Butters' hand with rage.

"I don't want your fucking crap lunch, Butters!" Cartman says, red-faced and shaking. "I want the sandwich my mom made! I want my chocolate milk with double Quik powder! I want my _goddamn_ _Blazin_' _Buffalo_ _Ranch_ _Doritos_!"

"Whoa, dude," Stan says, pulling Kyle toward the library. Karen is there again, alone, eating Cartman's lunch and looking rather content to do so.

"So that kid is here somewhere," Kyle says. "At school today." The thought makes Stan shudder, even though Kyle said they could probably kick the kid's ass.

"I wonder if he's targeting Cartman for a reason," Stan says. Kyle snorts.

"Even if he was, that doesn't really help us. I mean, Cartman has way fewer friends than enemies."

"True."

They watch Karen for a little while longer, until Stan starts to feel creepy about it and herds Kyle toward the cafeteria. They sit at their usual table, where Cartman is drafting a chart of potential suspects in the plot against him and his lunches. Butters is the only one paying attention to him, and he periodically offers bites of his tuna sandwich. Cartman accepts them, grudgingly.

"Have any of you noticed a weird kid hanging around Karen McCormick lately?" Kyle asks during a break in Cartman's rant. Kyle looks down the table at Craig and the others, but nobody seems to know what he's talking about.

"What's weird about him?" Clyde asks.

"He wears all black," Kyle says.

"To funerals," Stan adds, muttering, and Kyle kicks him under the table.

"Why don't you ask the Goth kids?" Craig says. "They wear all black."

Stan snorts at this brilliant observation, and Kyle gives him a look.

"That's actually not a bad idea," Kyle says. "I think I will ask them. Where do they eat lunch?"

"On the bleachers in the gym," Butters says, suddenly joining the conversation. "Or, wait - maybe that's the vampire kids? I still get them mixed up."

"Vampire kids?" Tweek says, shrieking this, his eyes wide. "I thought – gah! I thought they all left town?"

"Craig just told you that," Clyde says. "They're still around."

"Clyde," Craig says, glowering, and Clyde shrugs when Craig flicks him off.

"Oh, Jesus!" Tweek says, pulling at his hair.

"Dammit," Kyle says when the lunch bell rings. "Does anyone know where the Goth kids hang out after school?"

"At the Village Inn," Clyde says. "Um. I think."

"Kyle, Clyde - what the fuck are you guys blathering about?" Cartman asks, punching the table with his fist. "Who gives a shit if Kenny's sister is turning into a Goth? Someone is _stealing_ my fucking _lunch_."

"Nobody cares about your lunch, fat ass!" Kyle says, standing.

Cartman sputters; he actually looks hurt. "Butters cares!"

"Only because you ate more than half of his food!"

"No, I care, Eric, really, I do!" Butters says, scooting toward him. Stan rolls his eyes, wishing Kenny was here to lean over and whisper some obscene joke about how Butters would probably let Cartman eat _him_ if Cartman wanted to. Stan gets up and puts his tray away, heading back toward the classroom, Kyle at his side.

"You know what, I hope this asshole keeps stealing Cartman's lunch," Kyle says, whispering this into Stan's ear. "He deserves it."

"That's not very nice," Stan says, though he doesn't really care either way. He occasionally likes to defend Cartman just for the horrified looks Kyle gives him in return, or sometimes because Kyle is actually being the bigger idiot.

"Like I give a fuck if the world is nice to Eric Cartman!" Kyle says. "I just want to figure out how this kid is doing this. I remember Cartman making a big deal about his lunch this morning - he had it at the bus stop, and on the bus-"

"Dude, you're obsessing over this just as much as Cartman at this point."

"Right, but only because of the kid in black, Stan! Because of Karen! You're the one who said we need to watch out for her!" Kyle is getting fairly hysterical. Stan pats his shoulder.

"I know, dude, I know. C'mon, let's go find out what Garrison thinks about your pregnant Barbie doll theory."

"My _what_?"

"The toy Indian who wanted a bride? It's Lit unit time."

"Oh, right, Jesus." Kyle smirks and drops into his desk, next to Stan. "Sometimes I think you pay more attention to what comes out of my mouth than I do."

"That's - probably true."

Kyle hits him for that, but he looks pleased, smiling down at his copy of _The_ _Indian_ _in_ _the_ _Cupboard_ as he flips to the assigned pages.

After school, Kyle heads off on his Goth kid fact-finding mission and Stan goes to the locker room to dress out for football. It's an icy, sleet-infused afternoon, and he's not looking forward to practice, even if it is just a short one. He gets yelled at twice by his coach for not paying attention, and though he kind of hates his coach, he can't really blame him; his mind is elsewhere.

When practice is over he waits for the other guys to get lost and takes a shower before changing back into his school clothes. The locker room is empty and every sound he makes echoes. He feels anxious, specifically about being away from Kyle, which he needs to stop doing, because he's not five years old anymore, and he knows that Kyle isn't in danger just because Kenny died. Still, there's this kid in black, and sometimes when Kyle is being stupid and obsessive he's actually right, too. Stan jogs out of the locker room, his hair still wet and his coat unbuttoned. It's snowing, just lightly, and he decides he'll run all the way to Stark's Pond, 'cause why not. He pulls his hat on over his wet hair.

There's nobody at Stark's Pond when he gets there, but he's early. He shoves his hands in his pockets and stands near the tree on the far side of the pond where he usually meets Kyle, shivering. The snow starts falling harder, and though it's not even half past four yet, it's already getting dark. Stan's teeth chatter, and he's so wound up that he keeps thinking he hears voices from the woods, whispers, but it's just snow falling on pine needles. His heart clenches every time he turns around, and he laughs at himself, raising his shoulders to his jaw. Then he hears a footstep, unmistakably human, right behind him.

Praying that it's only Kyle, Stan flails backward when he turns to see a black-haired boy just inches away from being upon him, dressed in a black turtleneck and black slacks, no coat, his eyes burning into Stan's.

"Fuck!" Stan says, stumbling away when the kid reaches for him.

"Relax," the boy says. "I'm not going to take anything you won't be better off without."

"Get away from me!" Stan says. He swings at the boy, who catches his arm. His hand burns Stan's skin like a fucking furnace, right through his jacket and sweater, and he grins when Stan screams.

"I promise I won't leave a scar," the boy says, and the pain is gone, as if the fire in his hand has been put out. "If you're good and shut the fuck up."

He's evil; Kyle was right, Stan can feel it. There's something red in his eyes, not the color exactly, just the thing that means _stop_, _danger_, _get_ _away_. Stan knows he's going to die, feels the end of the world crystallizing in his bones, and when he tries to fight free the boy burns him again, laughing when he screams. When Stan is able to wrench his eyes open again, his face is soaked with tears like he's an ice sculpture that's being melted, and the boy is looking over Stan's shoulder, snarling at something in the distance.

"Oh, well, that's convenient," he says, smirking at Stan again. "I can wipe you both at once."

He drops Stan to the ground, and Stan flounders there, fish-like, arching to see what the boy is looking at, afraid that he knows what it is. He moans and shakes his head: it's Kyle, running across the frozen surface of Stark's Pond, shouting something. Kyle looks furious, like he did yesterday in Stan's room, and it's still harmless and endearing, but it's also fucking heartbreaking, because his outrage isn't going to save either of them.

"Stan!" Kyle shouts, and Stan tries to get his voice to work, tries to tell Kyle to get out of here, but something's happening to him. He feels like half of him is still in his body and the other half is being unraveled like a sweater, pieces of him already missing.

When the ice cracks, it's so loud that Stan thinks the boy in black has fired a gun at Kyle. Stan manages to roll onto his stomach, his mouth open around a soundless scream. The piece of ice that dislodges from the rest seems five times bigger than Kyle, and it tips him down into the dark like a platform in a video game. Kyle shouts and is gone, underwater, the ice floe that broke lose crashing over him and dislodging smaller pieces.

"You're fucking kidding me," the black-haired boy says.

Stan grits his teeth and slams his eyes shut. He promised himself he'd go to heaven or hell, and he can't even – but he can! He's up, on all fours and then stumbling toward the surface of the pond, panting, his vision tunneling. The ice is resettling, chunks of it bumping together over the black water, no sign of Kyle. Stan throws his jacket off.

"Wait!"

It's the black-haired boy, and Stan ignores him, preparing to jump in, trying to brace himself for the thousands of needles that will stab him as soon as he hits the water. Then he hears it again.

"Stan! Wait!"

This time it sounds like Kenny.

He turns and frowns when he sees Kenny running toward him, the hood of his parka pushed back, flapping behind him. He's carrying something – a bundle – blankets – and Stan's whole chest quakes, because Kenny shouldn't be here, and Stan doesn't know why he should feel this so deeply and certainly – but no, he's just – Kyle is under the water, it's so cold down there-

"I'll get him," Kenny says to Stan, breathing hard and throwing down the bundle of blankets. He holds up a hand in the direction of the black-haired boy, who's advancing, looking furious. "Damien, just, wait, let me get him, I won't let him die, I'll get him."

"McCormick!" Damien shouts. "You're supposed to be in hell!"

Kenny ignores him, strips off his parka, and before Stan can force out a protest, Kenny is in the water, ducking below the ice.

"Kenny!" Stan shouts, but Kenny can't hear him, because Kenny is – he's – Stan winces and sobs, falling onto his knees. He must be hallucinating; he can't think. The things that were unraveling are reshaping in his mind, making him nauseous with confusion.

"Alright, no," Damien says. "Shit, I've got to -" He lifts his hands, but stops in mid-gesture when Kenny breaks the surface, panting, holding Kyle against him.

"Kyle!" Stan screams, and he crawls closer to the edge of the pond, reaching for them.

"Don't get too close!" Kenny shouts. "You'll fall through!" He's only a few feet from the shore, and he hoists Kyle, who is coughing, his skin bluish and ice cold when Stan is able to grab him and drag him onto shore.

"What the hell are you doing, McCormick?" Damien shouts. "What is this? How did you –"

"Got out a day early on good behavior," Kenny says, his teeth chattering as Stan helps him out of the water. As soon as Kenny is on the shore Stan goes to Kyle, turning him onto his side so he can spit water onto the ground. Kyle is shaking, curling in on himself, and Stan knows he has to get Kyle's wet clothes off of him, but he can barely make his hands work.

"How did you know?" Damien asks as Kenny helps Stan pull Kyle out of his soaked, freezing clothes. "They can't have already told you – the ginger one just found out!"

"Oh, fuck," Kenny says, ignoring Damien and pushing Kyle's wet hair off his forehead; his hat has been lost to the water. "Jesus, shit, you guys are so - little." Kenny is sort of crying, but he's smiling, too, and as soon as they've stripped Kyle of everything but his underwear, Kenny drags some of the blankets over to him, helping Stan wrap him into them.

"What the hell is happening?" Stan asks. "Jesus, Kenny, _what_-"

"I'd like to know that, too," Damien says. "And if you need me to kill your friends in order to convince you to tell me-"

"Oh, shut up," Kenny says, shuddering from the cold, his hair freezing to his face. He's laughing crazily, hiccuping and grinning at Damien. "You're not killing anyone. I juh-just saved your ass."

"Kenny," Stan says. "Here, take your clothes off, take one of these blankets – how did you – how did you _know_?"

"Yes, please tell us," Damien says, his teeth grit.

"It can't be real," Kenny says, still laughing and crying. Stan is trying to hug blanket-wrapped Kyle against his chest and strip Kenny's shirt off of him at the same time, and he keeps looking down at Kyle, checking to make sure he's still okay. "But it is," Kenny says. He whips his shirt off and grabs his parka, pulling it on. "It is, I've felt this before, this is the real fucking thing."

"Dude?" Stan says, cupping Kyle's cheek. Kyle nods.

"Kenny," he says, but he's talking to Stan, frowning, and Stan is halfway to understanding that this is some kind of protest about Kenny, that he shouldn't be here, but somehow he is, and Stan doesn't care why or how at the moment, because Kyle is okay, shivering in his arms. Stan pulls off his hat and secures it around Kyle's head, rolling the folded rim down over Kyle's ears.

"McCormick!" Damien shouts, and Stan allows himself to realize, for the first time, how squeaky Damien's voice is. "Explain!"

"Dude, you guys," Kenny says, laughing and pulling a second blanket around himself. He's ignoring Damien, staring at Stan while he cradles Kyle against him, trying to absorb his shuddering. "Look at you, fuck. What're you – ten? You're ten, right? Oh, Jesus, I guess I am, too." Kenny looks down at his hands and does a sob-laugh thing that makes Kyle whimper and clutch at Stan's shirt.

"Kenny, what the fuck?" Stan says. He looks down at Kyle, and he's still clutching, rubbing his face against Stan's neck, trying to get warm. "How did you know to bring blankets?" Stan turns to Damien. "And who the fuck is this?"

"The blankets are from Christophe," Kenny says. "He was here when I got back, I just got back, I wasn't sure if I'd get here in time-"

"This is my father's doing, isn't it?" Damien says, snarling at Kenny. Stan is still afraid of him, remembering that unholy burn that seeped past his clothes without melting them, and he hugs Kyle closer.

"You don't remember," Kenny says, staring at Damien. He huffs, his breath visible in the air. "You're alive, so. It was a reset for you, too."

"What are you talking about?" Damien asks.

"Pip can tell you," Kenny says. He moves closer to Stan and Kyle, wrapping himself around them.

"Pip?" Stan says, thinking of their classmate who died last year, that British kid.

"How the fuck do you know about him?" Damien asks, looking dangerous again, despite the squeaky voice.

"Uh, how do you think?" Kenny says. "Your dad told me."

"Fuck him and fuck you! That's it, you're a fucking platypus again-"

"Wait!" Kenny says, holding up a hand. "Just wait. All this shit you've been worried about - you fixed it already. Pip can tell you. Everything's gonna be fine for you, dude. And don't give your dad such a hard time. He's not that bad."

"Kenny, what the fuck are you talking about?" Kyle asks, some color returning to his face as he squirms in Stan's arms, sitting up straighter. "What's going on? Why are you talking about Christophe and Pip? They're both _dead_."

"Yeah, like I was," Kenny says, grinning. He touches Stan's face, then Kyle's, and the gesture is so wistful and grown-up that Stan thinks of his mother. "But you guys forgot, didn't you?"

"Forgot what?" Stan asks.

"That I died," Kenny says. Stan looks down at Kyle.

"He's high," Kyle says, muttering, and Kenny laughs. "He's got that artificial adrenaline shit going on." Kyle turns to Damien and frowns. "Just who the hell are you and why were you fucking attacking Stan? What do you want with Karen McCormick? Henrietta Biggle said you were a Satanist."

"I don't worship him!" Damien says. "Far fucking from it."

"Look, dude, it's over," Kenny says to Damien. "And trust me, you're gonna be okay. Pip will tell you everything."

"Kenny, what are you _on_?" Stan asks.

"You'd better not have done anything to him," Damien says, backing away from the three of them.

"What am I gonna do to him?" Kenny asks. "He's dead."

"Alright," Stan says. He gets up, shakily, hoisting Kyle into his arms, carrying him bridal-style and thinking briefly of that Indian in the cupboard. "We need to get you two someplace warm. C'mon, Kenny. Can you go to the hospital, or are they gonna arrest you for being on crack or something?"

"I'm not on crack, but I've gotta go see Wendy," Kenny says, standing.

"Wendy?" Stan and Kyle say in unison, looking at each other with confusion.

"No, dude," Kyle says. "You're still wearing your boots. Your feet will freeze!"

"My feet will be fine," Kenny says, and he steps backward, beaming at them. "I can't fucking believe this. We did it."

"Did what?" Damien asks. "Futilely attempted to stop me? Congratulations, McCormick. When I overthrow my father your stays in hell won't be quite so enjoyable."

"Dude, don't even worry about that shit," Kenny says. "You're gonna have a baby, and you don't have to ruin my sister's life to do it, or theirs." He nods to Stan and Kyle. "Or mine, for that matter."

"What?" Damien says, scoffing. "How could you-"

"Kenny, what the fuck?" Stan says, already walking away with Kyle, who is heavier than he looks. "That kid is like, eleven at most."

"Only when he's on earth," Kenny says. "In hell he's like, what?" He looks at Damien. "Two hundred or something? Anyway, he's much taller and bigger down there, like, older, sort of, and he doesn't sound like a mouse-"

"There's not - I can't-" Damien backs up against a tree, looking dazed, then he glowers at Kenny again. "You're trying to trick me. It wouldn't have a soul."

"It will, a regular old mortal one, and you will, too, even after you die." Kenny shrugs. "Welcome to the feeling of having your memories wiped. Kinda sucks, right?"

"McCormick, I swear on every unholy power in the fucking universe-"

"Go ask Pip," Kenny says, holding up a hand. "And if I'm lying, come back and turn me into a platypus." He's jogging backward now, waving to Stan and Kyle. "I gotta go see Wendy. Take Kyle home and warm him up, he'll be fine, Christophe promised."

Stan is getting tired of Kenny's ravings, though he is glad to see him, and grateful to him; he's not sure he could have navigated that icy water himself. Maybe it's a blessing that Kenny is high as fuck. Stan still doesn't understand where the blankets came from, but he doesn't care much at the moment.

"Kenny, wait!" Stan says when he starts to run off. "You'll get sick, c'mon, don't be crazy!"

"I'm fine, I promise!" Kenny says, waving. He's rather spry for someone who's halfway undressed and running in frozen shoes.

"Am I dreaming this?" Kyle asks. Stan shakes his head and turns to Damien, but he's disappeared.

"What the fuck?" Stan says, spinning around. "Where'd he go?"

"Forget it, Marsh," someone says. "It's Chinatown."

Stan turns, stumbling away from the sound of the voice, because he can't deal with any more crazy shit right now, and the guy has a French accent, is smoking a cigarette, and looks exactly like the Mole, Christophe, who is very definitely dead. Christophe smirks at Stan's expression.

"What the hell!" Kyle says, fidgeting in Stan's arms. "You died!"

"_Oui_, effarig, but death is a bit more complicated than you might think. I am here to tell you goodbye for good, though." Christophe touches the blankets that are wrapped around Kyle, and Stan is too stunned to move away. He can feel the blankets get warmer.

"What the _fuck_ is going on?" Stan asks, pulling Kyle away from Christophe. "Why is Kenny talking about - hell, and - _babies_, and-"

"McCormick talks too much," Christophe says. "And usually without knowing what he's saying, but maybe this time he's right. We will see. If God really is going to give that son of a bitch and his English tea rose a baby, I'm going to be there to keep an eye on things, all the time, even if it means hanging around with those two. So I have to say goodbye to you, effie, but I think you'll be well taken care of without me, now that things have been set right."

"What's happening?" Kyle asks. He sounds like he'll cry, and Stan holds him tighter, his arms beginning to tire and shake. "How did you do that? The blankets, you, like-"

"I couldn't save you myself," Christophe says. "I'm not yours anymore, but the blankets, this I could do." He smiles sadly and backs away, lifting his hand. "It's good you won't remember how you knew me, when you knew me, that other way things might have gone. You weren't very happy then, effie. You'll be better off with him looking out for you, I think." He gestures to Stan with his cigarette.

"Wait," Kyle says, and he's crying for real as Christophe backs away, toward the clearing in the woods that Damien emerged from. "I don't understand-"

"Look on the shore before you leave," Christophe says, already far away enough to shout. "You're forgetting something, I think."

He disappears into the shadows in the woods. Stan and Kyle stare after him, the smell of his cigarette lingering. Kyle is sniffling, and when Stan turns toward the shore of the pond, he laughs, hoisting Kyle up a little higher. Kyle's hat is there in the muddy snow, soggy and dirty but intact.

"Man, fuck this," Stan says. "Let's get you home. Unless you want me to take you to Hell's Pass?"

"No," Kyle says. "I feel okay. I feel _good_, Jesus. I just want to go home." He clings to Stan as Stan walks over to the shore and squats down to grab Kyle's hat.

"I hope Kenny's okay," Stan says, his legs trembling when he stands again, trying not to drop Kyle. "Do you think he gave us a contact high or something?"

"I don't know," Kyle says. He puts his face against Stan's neck and sighs as Stan carries him away from the pond, toward the park entrance. "That can't have been Christophe," he says. "That wasn't really him, right?"

"You know what I was thinking the other day?" Stan asks, unwilling to answer that. He feels dizzy and overly warm, and stronger than he should be, as if he's been infused with something that will give him the power to carry Kyle all the way home if he has to.

"What?" Kyle asks.

"I was thinking that if you died I'd go to heaven, or hell, or both if I had to. Like, to get you back."

"Yeah?" Kyle tugs Stan's hat down more firmly over his ears. "Well, good thing Kenny was there, you know? So you didn't have to go beating on the gates of hell or whatever."

"Yep," Stan says, though after what they just saw, he's not sure he didn't do just fucking that, outside of himself, in some way he'll never untangle.

"I really thought I was gonna die," Kyle says. He hooks his hand around the collar of Stan's shirt. "And before that, when that Damien kid was over there with you, I thought he was going to kill you. I can't believe I ran across the pond like that. I wasn't thinking, I just. Had to get to you."

Stan wants to say something but he's not sure what it is, and his chest has gotten tight. It's something about Kenny, and Kyle, and why Stan was afraid Kyle might die even before the ice cracked, but his mind is clouded and he's exhausted, the muscles in his arms burning as he carries Kyle toward the road, Kyle's soggy hat still closed into his fist.

"Why was Kenny saying he had to go to Wendy's house?" Kyle asks as they walk along the road, snow swirling around Stan's uncovered ears, the heat beginning to fade from the blankets.

"I don't know," Stan says. "I don't know if Kenny even remembered his own name just then. I've never seen him act so crazy."

"I guess we should be worried," Kyle says. "He seemed happy, though, you know? Like, for real? Like he'd just won the lottery. And he wasn't wearing his hood!"

"Yeah, that was weird. And he was talking a lot."

"A lot," Kyle agrees. "I can't even remember half of what he said. I think I was still in shock."

"Did something happen last week?" Stan asks, narrowing his eyes and trying to concentrate, the details of the past few hours slipping away like a dream he can't hold onto. "Something with, like. A car?"

"A car?" Kyle says. "What are you talking about?"

"I have no idea. Forget it."

"It's Chinatown," Kyle says.

"Huh?"

"That's what - um." Kyle shifts in Stan's arms. "I don't know - where have I heard that? A movie or something?"

"_Chinatown_, maybe?"

"That's a movie?"

"I think so," Stan says. "But, like. I know what you mean. Fucking South Park."

"We have to move away from here someday," Kyle says, tucking his head to Stan's chest. "You know - you can stop carrying me if you want."

"Kyle, you're basically naked. And barefoot."

"Oh yeah. Why the hell did I walk across the pond? I'm so stupid. I just had to get to you."

"Good thing Kenny was there." Stan is starting to feel like he'll faint. There was something about a car, and Wendy gave him a greeting card in a pale purple envelope, something to do with Kenny. Kyle is so goddamn heavy. Stan will be able to think straight again once he puts him down.

A car pulls up alongside them a few minutes later, and the woman who's driving rolls down her window to ask if they're okay. She's the mother of one of Ike's classmates; Kyle apparently knows her, and they have to listen to a lot of very obvious instruction about why playing on the ice at the start of winter is a bad idea. They're both in the backseat, seat belts buckled, and Stan feels antsy. He wants Kyle in his lap again, even though the heat in the car is blasting and Kyle is still wrapped in three blankets. Stan knows it's not true, not literally, but he feels like nothing could ever make Kyle as warm as he can.

When they get to Kyle's house and explain what happened, Kyle's mother immediately goes into full-volume hysteria, chiding Kyle and coddling him in the same breath, calling him her poor _bubbeh_ and cursing him in Hebrew. Ike and Gerald are there, too, Ike hugging Kyle's legs while Gerald asks Stan a thousand questions about what happened. Kyle is fussing at all of them, telling them he's fine, but he doesn't protest when his parents touch his hair, which is a kind of cease fire that Stan has only ever seen in the wake of near death experiences.

"Did your life flash before your eyes?" Ike asks, articulating this eerily well for a four-year-old, as usual.

"Ike!" Sheila says. "Don't be morbid!"

"Somebody's life did," Kyle says, frowning. "Maybe not mine. It was weird."

"Ack, Gerald, listen to him, he's babbling! He's probably feverish, we should take him to the hospital-"

"No, ma, I'm fine, I swear!" Kyle says. "I just want some dinner and to go to bed. _Please_ don't make me deal with doctors and tests and all that shit right now, I'm so tired."

"Well, alright, _bubbeh_, but I'm going to take your temperature every hour, just in case." She puts her hand against his forehead and sighs. Kyle sighs, too, and Stan isn't sure if he meant to mimic her or if his sigh is just naturally identical. Probably the latter. Stan heads for the door as Sheila drags Kyle upstairs, talking about putting him in a hot bath.

"Mom, Jesus," Kyle says, though he's letting himself be pulled along, his hand in hers. "Stan, wait!" he says, halfway up the stairs. "Your hat!"

"Just give it back to me at school tomorrow," Stan says. Kyle looks a little funny in it, the red clashing with his hair, and it doesn't suit the shape of his head the way the ushanka does. Stan still has Kyle's hat in his hand, and it's still soggy, a mess. He lifts it up and grins. "I've got yours, so it's only fair."

"Be careful with my hat!" Kyle calls as his mother successfully yanks him all the way up the stairs.

"Stanley, don't you want a ride home?" Gerald asks.

"No, thanks." He wants to stop off somewhere before he goes home. He waves to Ike and Gerald, who is examining one of the blankets that Kyle shed when he changed into dry clothes.

"Where'd you guys get these?" Gerald asks, looking up at Stan, frowning.

"Kenny," Stan says, and that's all the explanation he has the energy to give. He waves and slips out the door.

It's completely dark outside and the snow has stopped, a fresh layer of it glittering over the frozen yards in Kyle's neighborhood. Stan's is only a short walk away, but he bypasses it and heads toward Wendy's house, which is closer to the fanciest part of town, not far from Token's. Kyle's hat is a cold lump in his hand, and Stan sticks it in his jacket pocket, thinking, absurdly, that it needs to be kept warm, as if it's some extension of Kyle's physical self.

Wendy's mother answers the door when Stan reaches her house, and Wendy is quickly there, still wearing her school clothes, a baggy sweater and a short skirt, knee socks. She looks pretty, and happy to see him, but Stan didn't really come here for her.

"Did Kenny come by here earlier?" he asks, lingering on the front stoop. Wendy's smile sort of freezes, then drops into a frown.

"Yeah," she says. "Did you tell him something about me?"

"Something about you? Like what?"

"Like - that I think he shouldn't wear his hood all the time?" She's blushing, which might be cause for concern, but Stan is too tired to think about why.

"No," he says. "I didn't tell him anything. I was just wondering why he came over here. We were at the pond, Kyle fell through the ice-"

"Oh my God!" Wendy puts her hand over her mouth. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he's fine, it was scary, though. Kenny saved him."

"He did?" Wendy smiles. "Wow."

"Well, I was going to, but then Kenny, he had these blankets-" Stan makes himself shut up, embarrassed. "Anyway. He ran off right after it happened, and I wanted to make sure he was okay, 'cause his boots were wet and stuff."

"He seemed dry when he was here," Wendy says. "And he didn't even mention this Kyle thing. He seemed a little - nuts."

"Yeah! He seemed that way at the pond, too. Kyle thinks he was high."

"Oh," Wendy says. She toys with the doorknob. "Maybe."

"What all did he say to you?"

"Nothing, really. Just that he's going to wear his hood down from now on. He said I came to him in a dream and told him that he should. Oh, God, I guess he was high. It didn't - I mean, that didn't, um, occur to me, I guess."

"Well, it's Kenny, so. Anyway. I'd better go, my parents will worry." Stan turns to walk down the steps. "See you tomorrow."

"Stan!" Wendy calls before he can get far, and he stops. She moans and closes her eyes, bringing one of her hands to her face. "Well. I might as well tell you. You'll be mad, but honest, I didn't do anything to provoke it!"

"Provoke what?" Stan asks, feeling queasy. He just wants to get home and pass out in his bed, though he'll have to do something about Kyle's hat first, because he can't leave it like this overnight. It might get moldy.

"Kenny, kind of, um." Wendy walks down the stairs, wearing only socks, tip-toeing. "He kind of, like. Kissed me?"

"What!"

"Don't flip out! It was a little thing. A peck! He said not to tell you, but-"

"I'll kick his ass!"

"No, don't do that!" Wendy groans. "I shouldn't have told you."

"Yes, you should have! What, you were actually going to keep that from me?"

"Wendy?" her mother calls, hearing their raised voices. "Everything okay?"

"Yes, Mom!" Wendy says. She sighs and rolls her shoulders, turning back to Stan. "Don't be mad."

"Don't be mad? Aren't you? Did you hit him or anything?"

"No, I didn't hit him! It wasn't gross. Not what you'd expect from Kenny, I mean. It was, like. Sweet."

"Me and you are broken up!" Stan shouts, and he wheels away from her, furious.

"What!"

"You heard me!" He holds a hand back in her direction, like a stop signal, though she's not attempting to follow him. "Go ahead and kiss Kenny all you want, see if I fucking care."

"Stan!"

He runs the rest of the way home, angry at first, then sort of jubilant, maybe just from the endorphins. Also: Kyle is alive. Kenny is, too; he might have died trying to save Kyle, something Stan barely had time to worry about before they both broke the surface of the water. Even if Kenny did kiss Wendy like a backstabbing asshole, Stan is glad that he's not dead. He'd rather have Kenny around to save Kyle when needed than not have him here just for the sake of stopping him from kissing Wendy. This feels like an important distinction, and Stan is proud of himself for making it as he jogs up the front stairs of his house and barrels inside.

"Stan!" His mother is on him as soon as he's in the door. "Kyle's mother just called - are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he says, feeling sitcom-ish, because his father and sister are there, too, his father getting off the sofa and his sister continuing to recline upon it. Stan's mother laughs when he gives her an unsolicited hug.

"What was that for?" she asks, grinning when he pulls back.

"Nothing," he says, embarrassed. "I'm gonna wash up for dinner."

"Without me having to ask? Imagine that! So Kyle is okay?"

"Yeah, he's good," Stan says. He's almost dancing up the stairs, not sure why he feels so suddenly happy. He thinks of how Kenny was earlier, looking down at his hands and sobbing with joy when he saw them. Maybe it's just a contact high; Stan is pretty sure he saw dead people at the pond, but that can't be right.

After dinner, he sets to work on Kyle's hat, following a little Google research about how to properly clean a ushanka. He washes it by hand in the bathroom sink, thinking of the Jack he poured down the drain just two days earlier and trying to remember what set that off. Kyle, probably. Something Kyle said, or just Kyle being in here, washing his hands. Stan remembers when he looks up at himself in the bathroom mirror: Kyle told him about eating lunch alone in the library. That was why Stan poured out his liquor.

Stan uses Shelley's hair dryer on Kyle's hat and hangs it on the back of his desk chair when it's restored to its former glory, fluffy and clean. Before bed, he logs in to his secret Facebook account, the one only three other people know about, where nobody harasses him about relationship statuses or the poking of relatives: Stan Darsh. Kyle made it for him for emergency crop watering purposes, back when he was still obsessed with Farmville. Now Stan uses it for his nightly recaps, and he grins when he sees that all of Stan Darsh's Facebook friends are online: Kyle Two, Mysterion, and Mitch Connor. Kyle sends him a message as soon as he logs on.

Kyle Two: How's my hat?

Stan Darsh: good as new. you ok?

Kyle Two: Yeah, just tired.

Mitch Connor: lol kyle almost died

Mysterion: cartman wtf

Stan Darsh: hey kenny heard you made out with wendy that's pretty awesome good job

Kyle Two: WHOA WHAT

Mitch Connor: LOLL!

Mysterion: shit dude I'm sorry

Stan Darsh: you're lucky you saved kyle today or I'd have killed you already

Kyle Two: Wait, seriously? Kenny?

Mysterion: sorry but I love wendy

Mitch Connor: FIGGGGHTTTTT!

Mysterion: shut up cartman

Mitch Connor: seriosly you guys I'm laughing so hard

Kyle Two: Learn how to spell seriously, fat ass. You say it often enough.

Mitch Connor: Learn how to suck my dick kahl, you need your mouth plugged often enough

Kyle Two: I'd rather plug it with a fucking grenade, thanks.

Mysterion: dude, stan, I'm really sorry, but

Mysterion: you'll thank me someday

Stan Darsh: Kenny you are FUCKED. UP.

Mysterion: maybe but i love you guys SO MUCH

Kyle Two: Oh, Jesus, he's high.

Mysterion: ok now I seriously kind of am :)

Stan Darsh: kenny goddammit

Mysterion: only from one beer! one beer! oh man you guys we are TEN YEARS OLD!

Mitch Connor: Okay this is freaking me out now

Kyle Two: Um, yeah. Thanks for saving my life, though, and everything.

Mysterion: oh kyle

Mysterion: your welcome

Kyle Two: You're

Mysterion: what now?

Kyle Two: Never mind.

Stan Darsh: i'm going to bed. my arms still hurt and you guys are uncle fuckers. g'night

Kyle Two: Sorry your arms hurt!

Stan Darsh: kyle goddammit

Kyle Two: What?

Stan Darsh: nothing

Mysterion: don't hate me stan its gonna work out I promise

Stan Darsh: yeah okay whatever

Mitch Connor: You guys are such fags

Kyle Two: Cartman, go stick Butters' dick in your mouth and shut up.

Stan Darsh: seriously

Mysterion: LOL oh man

Mysterion: that is gonna happen

Mysterion: in a big way

Mitch Connor: Yeah right, go smoke some more crack Kenny

Mitch Connor: SCREW YOU GUYS anyway

Mitch Connor: I'm going to bed

Kyle Two: Me, too. Night guys. Um, thanks again, Kenny.

Mysterion: i'll do it again if i have to

Stan Darsh: kyle don't forget to bring my hat tomorrow

Kyle Two: Don't forget mine!

Stan Darsh: I won't

Kyle Two: Okay, bye for real

Mysterion: for real

Mysterion: for real this time

Stan Darsh: kenny jesus christ

Mysterion: :)

Stan Darsh: she was glad

Mysterion: ?

Stan Darsh: wendy. i could tell. ok fuck you and goodnight

Mysterion: hey wait

Stan Darsh: what

Mysterion: nothing just

Mysterion: thanks for existing

Stan Darsh: um yeah

Stan Darsh: you're welcome

Stan Darsh: back atcha

Stan Darsh: kenny?

Mysterion: still here

Stan Darsh: right well

Stan Darsh: g'night

Mysterion: see you at the bus stop

Stan flips his bedroom light off, gets into bed, and gets out again. He walks to his desk chair and grabs Kyle's hat. He feels like it's humming, egging him on, like this is his one chance. He puts it on and gets back in bed, dragging the blankets up over him.

He dreams of the past life that wasn't really Kyle's, though in the dream he knows that it was, even if it somehow also wasn't. He sees the parking lot, feels the cold, lies on his back on countless hospital beds, has things plugged into him, swallows pills, dyes his hair blue, spoons Indian food into his mouth and hides from the classmates who want to torment him, gets thrown over the sides of beds and drunk enough to forget his name, watches blood seep down over his palm and drip into a sink, sobs into his hands in a plastic chair in a church basement, feels fireworks shaking through his chest when he's really only watching them, far away. When he wakes up it's still dark, and his face is soaked with tears, though he's not crying; his chest has stopped shaking. He looks down at his hands and gasps because they're so small, but he quickly doesn't understand why he thought they should be bigger, and finally just feels relieved, because as far as he remembers they've always been this size.

Stan wipes his cheeks dry and stares at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. They're just faintly visible; they lose their power around three o'clock in the morning. Stan glances at the digital clock on his bedside table and sees that it's a quarter past two. He'll have school in the morning. Something's deeply off, and he frowns, then laughs at himself when he figures out what it is. He's wearing Kyle's hat. He pulls down on the flaps and presses them against his cheeks. His mom promised that Kyle could sleep over on Saturday. That's just three days away. Stan moans and grabs his pillow, tucking it between his legs and against his cheek. He knows he's being gay; he doesn't really give a fuck. He closes his eyes and squeezes his pillow harder, pretending it's Kyle.


	22. Chapter 22

**A/N:** Thank you so much to those who have read and reviewed - here is Kyle's final chapter, breaking the record for the previous longest chapter, naturally. Two more chapters and an epilogue left!

* * *

><p>Kyle is fairly certain that he's the only Jew in South Park, and maybe in all of Colorado, who sets his alarm for church on Sunday mornings. The alarm goes off just as Stan's service is starting at the Catholic church across town, and Kyle tries to envision what Stan is doing there as he climbs into the shower. He's asked to go, just out of curiosity, but his mother is sensitive about this sort of thing and has forbidden it. Stan says it's boring, which is also true of synagogue, but now that he's almost twelve years old Kyle is back to wondering if he actually believes in God, while Stan seems pretty certain that he does. They don't talk about it often, and Kyle isn't sure that he likes it when they do, but what Stan believes in is a particular interest of Kyle's, and he pays attention when Stan talks about it.<p>

Sundays are weird, or, more precisely: Stan is often weird after church. Today it's cold, though it's the middle of April and some feeble signs of the coming spring are beginning to emerge. Kyle waits on Stan's front stoop, his back to the door and his knees hugged to his chest, shivering inside his coat while he watches the road. He gets up when he sees Stan's parents' station wagon pulling around the corner, shoves his hands into his pockets and walks down the steps. It would make more sense to wait at home and sleep late, to let Stan sit in his room while he showered and dressed, but they've been doing Sundays this way since they were kids and Kyle doesn't want to stop. He's anxious about change when it comes to Stan.

"Hey," Stan says when he's out of the car, jogging to Kyle. He doesn't slow down when he reaches him, just takes Kyle's elbow and pulls him along. Stan's mother long ago stopped trying to guilt him into going into the house and changing out of his church clothes before running off with Kyle, and Kyle worries about Stan's dress shoes slipping over the frozen landscape as they hurry across it. Stan has his coat on, but it's not buttoned up all the way, and Kyle can see the knot of his tie and the pressed white collar of his shirt.

"How was church?" Kyle asks once they're far enough from Stan's house to stop running.

"Fine," Stan says. He reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out his blue and red hat, securing it over his hair. "It was a sermon about hell. Those are my favorites."

"Really?" Kyle says, bothered by this.

"It's just entertaining," Stan says. "More than usual. Father Maxi gets all worked up."

"What did he say about it?"

"Torment and eternity, all that stuff." Stan looks over at Kyle and shrugs. "Seems dumb to me. Like, made up to scare people."

"Yeah. What if it's not, though?"

"Then some evil assholes will roast," Stan says. "Not people like us."

"Stan, I'm Jewish."

"So? Jesus still loves you." He smirks when Kyle scowls at him. "C'mon, let's go to the clearing."

"Oh, God, not the clearing."

"Yes, the clearing. I'll race you!" He takes off, and Kyle groans. He could put up a fight, but it's no use. He follows Stan toward Stark's Pond, skirting the icy surface that's thick enough to skate on and will be until May. They never go on the ice here, and Kyle hasn't even been skating at Turquoise Lake since he almost died under a sheet of ice two winters ago. He puts his hand out when he catches up to Stan, and Stan takes it, slowing to a brisk walk as they approach the clearing. He knows Kyle hates it here; the hand holding thing is supposed to compensate for that, probably. They don't talk about it.

"All that stuff about hell made me think about this place, actually," Stan says. Kyle sighs, and Stan gives his hand a consoling squeeze. "Let's just try one more time."

"It's always 'one more time.' It's been 'one more time' for the past two years."

"What if this is the time something happens, though?"

"I wish I could figure out what you think is going to happen," Kyle says. They're at the edge of the clearing now, and when Kyle hesitates Stan allows it, standing at his side and threading his fingers through Kyle's.

"I have no idea," Stan says. "But something definitely happened here. Something weird. You were there."

"All I remember is almost dying," Kyle says, but that's a lie. He has dreams about this place all time, frightening things that he can only vaguely remember when he wakes up, faces appearing out of thin air and disappearing again into the darkness of the woods. The woods are not dark now, but Kyle is still nervous as Stan leads him into the clearing. The whole experience of being saved is a blur in his memory: Kenny and Stan stripped his clothes off and wrapped him in blankets, Stan put his hat on Kyle's head and carried him along the road until a car picked them up. Generally, that's where things become less blurry. Why Kenny was carrying blankets to Stark's Pond that day is a subject that Stan badgers him about endlessly. Kenny claims that he'd just picked them up from Good Will and was taking them home to put on his bed, but Stan doesn't accept this. Kyle thinks it must be a lie, too, but it's a harmless one, and he doesn't want to figure out why Stan feels like something significant happened here. Some memories are better repressed, is Kyle's feeling.

Stan sits in the middle of the clearing, Indian-style. Kyle sits across from him in the same fashion, their knees touching. The ground is cold; Kyle can feel it through the seat of his pants. Stan puts his hands over Kyle's knees, turning his palms upward, and Kyle covers Stan's hands with his. They invented this ceremony, or, anyway, Stan did, and so far it's yielded no epiphanies about this place.

"Why did a sermon about hell make you think of being here?" Kyle asks.

"I don't know. But don't you want to find out?"

"Fuck no! I mean, if this place is evil, we're here like sitting ducks, no one is around-"

"No, it's not like that," Stan says. His hands twitch under Kyle's. "I feel like something good happened here."

"Easy for you to say. You're not the one who almost died."

"It wasn't all bad," Stan says. He looks down at their hands. "When I knew you were okay - ah." He stops there, and Kyle flinches, wanting to take his hands away from Stan's. He probably obsesses over that day even more than Stan does, for different reasons. They're getting too old to abstractly cuddle each other in Stan's bed during sleepovers, and it almost never happens anymore. That day, when Kyle almost died, was also the last time Stan really held him. He knows it's gay to miss that kind of stuff, and he thinks sometimes that's exactly why he does: he's gay. Maybe.

"Close your eyes," Stan says. Kyle groans and obeys.

They sit in silence for awhile, eyes closed, palms pressed together, listening to the wind through the melting pines and the distant sound of squirrels skittering around back in the woods. Kyle always thinks he can hear a sound like cracking ice, eventually, and that's usually when he opens his eyes. Today all he can hear is the usual woodland noises and Stan's breath. It's pointless to remark on how gay they look doing this and how much shit they'd be given if one of their friends were to see them here, but Kyle can't help thinking of it, like he always does, and his face gets hot.

"Anything?" Stan asks. Kyle opens his eyes. Stan has only one open, peeking at him.

"No," Kyle says. "For fuck's sake. Just like every other Sunday that we've done this for the past two years. Can we go now?"

"Dammit," Stan says. He moves his hands, and Kyle takes his away, hiding them in his jacket pocket. "Dude, don't act like you don't know what I mean about this place."

"Don't act like you don't know why I hate it here! You're just fixated on it because I almost died. Let it go, Stan. I have."

"Then how come you won't ice skate?"

Kyle groans. "Fine, maybe I'm still a chicken shit about that, but-"

"That's not what I meant." Stan puts his hands on Kyle's knees again, palms down this time. "Dude, I understand."

"Yeah? Then why do you make me come here?" Kyle's face is still hot, his hands curling into fists inside his pockets.

"I don't _make_ you," Stan says. He frowns, looking worried. "Do I?"

"More or less."

"Well, it's just because I think something crazy happened here and I want to figure out what it was."

"Something crazy like what?" Kyle asks.

"Like a miracle," Stan says, suddenly looking very grave. Kyle stares at him, stunned. He's asked Stan that question a thousand times, and Stan has never had an answer before. Stan looks away, blushing.

"A miracle," Kyle says flatly.

"Yes, Kyle, I think it's a miracle that you're alive." Stan actually sounds kind of angry about it at the moment, or about the fact that Kyle doesn't agree. Kyle stays on the ground while Stan gets to his feet, wiping dirt and pine straw from his pants.

"Well," Kyle says. "It's not like I'm not grateful-"

"It's more than that," Stan says. "Look, forget it. You want to leave, fine. Let's go."

"What do you mean, 'it's more than that?'"

"I mean that I think - I don't know!" Stan groans and tucks his bangs inside his hat. "Forget it. You'll make fun of me."

"Since when do you care if I make fun of you?" Kyle asks, because they used to rag on each other all the time. These past two years have been weird. Not bad, just different. Stan has been careful with him, apparently still traumatized by that day when Kenny had to pull him out of the ice.

"You know what bothers me more than anything?" Stan asks. He sounds like he's getting emotional, and Kyle is deeply confused. He stands and brushes his own pants clean.

"What?" he asks, walking toward Stan.

"Why was it Kenny who went in after you? Why wasn't it me?"

"I don't know," Kyle says. "I was drowning at the time." He feels bad for trying to joke, because Stan looks fairly devastated. Kyle blames church, that sermon about hell, this goddamn clearing.

"I wouldn't have hesitated," Stan says. "I can't remember why I did, but I know I did, and I wouldn't have unless I had a reason, and I can't remember the _fucking_ reason." He turns away from Kyle and puts his hands over his face, muffling a frustrated groan. "It's driving me crazy."

"Dude, why? What does it matter who-"

"Because I hate myself for this!" Stan says, whirling on him. "I just stood there like a coward and let him go after you? That's not me! That's not what I'd do!"

"What the hell, man? Why are you freaking out? It's not like I'm mad at you for not, like, being the one-" Kyle stops there, halfway to telling Stan that he was _glad_ that Stan was the one who was dry on the shore, because that meant he got to spend the next half hour wrapped up in Stan's arms, not Kenny's. "Is this why you keep dragging me here? Because of this weird guilt shit?"

"Just forget it," Stan says. He starts to walk away, his voice pinched. "I'll never make you come here again."

"Stan, wait."

Stan doesn't fight it when Kyle grabs his arm, and he lets Kyle pull him close, into a hug. Only with his chin resting on Stan's shoulder and his hands clutching at the back of Stan's jacket is Kyle able to fully realize how much he's missed this, and how much he's needed it. Stan squeezes Kyle to him, his breath puffing against Kyle's ear. Stan turned twelve back in October and he's just a little bit taller, something Kyle has been jealous about since last summer, when he noticed their height difference while they were in line for a roller coaster. It feels good, suddenly, being a little smaller.

"You want to hear something crazy?" Kyle asks, still holding him.

"What?"

"I have these dreams about it, you know, nightmares? And in the dreams it's always you who jumps in after me. Never Kenny. It's always you."

"I have bad dreams about it, too," Stan says. He takes a deep breath, and Kyle can feel it against his chest; it makes his heart race. He lets his breath out when Stan does. Stan smells like church, incense and communion wafers.

"Maybe it was a miracle," Kyle says. He pulls back, trying not to show how alarmed he is by the proximity of Stan's face to his own. "I remember - something about the blankets. While you were, um. Holding me. They got warmer." Kyle still has those blankets his house, and he uses them on his bed in the winter, wrapping himself into them underneath his comforter and thinking about that day when Stan carried him.

"I feel so fucking – mixed up, sometimes," Stan says, and Kyle nods. He leans forward and presses his lips to Stan's, his eyes sliding shut.

It's a short, dry kiss. Stan is frozen and wide-eyed when Kyle pulls back.

"Dude," Stan says. "What just happened?"

"Uh," Kyle says. He actually really doesn't know. He wasn't himself just now, he was some other guy, someone who felt like he had the right to kiss Stan in order to show him that he feels pretty fucking mixed up, too. Now he knows how Stan feels about hesitating to dive into the frozen water: _That's_ _not_ _me_. _That's_ _not_ _what_ _I'd_ _do_.

"Oh, fuck," Kyle says, panicking, because they're in the clearing, by the pond, but he's not waking up from this nightmare. He can feel red bleeding onto his face, and can see Stan's shock transforming into grim understanding. "Just - pretend I didn't do that. I mean, I was joking. I mean-"

"I'm not mad," Stan says. He looks away and frowns a little, like he just remembered some homework that he'll have to do later.

"I'm sorry," Kyle says. He lets go of Stan, backing away from him. Obscenely, terribly, he wants to lick his lips to see if they taste like Stan, as if Kyle has ever known what Stan tastes like. "I'm so sorry, dude, shit, I don't know - it's this place, this place is fucking possessed or something."

"I'm not gay, you know?" Stan says, finally meeting Kyle's eyes again. He doesn't seem upset or even embarrassed, and in fact he's a good deal calmer than he was when he was having his little meltdown over the fact that Kenny beat him into the water that day. Kyle huffs.

"Me either!" he says. "It was just, like-"

"It's weird because I think I was glad," Stan says. He finally blushes. "Maybe. Huh. That's so weird."

"What?" Kyle asks, beginning to hyperventilate.

"I don't know," Stan says. "C'mere for a second."

"No. Why? What for?"

"Just c'mere, Kyle, stop freaking out."

Kyle doesn't go to him, but he stays in place when Stan walks over to him, looming over him again. There's still a little frown pinched between Stan's eyebrows, but he doesn't seem mad, just perplexed. Kyle lets out the breath he was holding when Stan puts his hands on his shoulders.

"What are you doing?" Kyle asks, loudly, when Stan starts to lower his face to his. Stan pauses in mid swoon and shrugs.

"I wanted to try it again," he says. "I wasn't expecting it before. I couldn't really tell if I liked it or not."

"Of course you didn't like it!" Kyle says, shouting this in Stan's face. "You're not gay! You just said!"

"Well, no," Stan says, his frown deepening. "But, just. Be still for a second." His hands slide down to squeeze Kyle's upper arms, and he presses his lips to Kyle's, puckering them dramatically and closing his eyes. Kyle pinches his eyes shut, too, and he puckers back, just a little, a thrill of frightening interest shooting down his spine. Stan pulls away first, still holding Kyle's arms. "Weird," he says.

"What?" Kyle asks, barely squeaking the word out. He's starting to get an erection, which is the last fucking thing he needs right now.

"I don't know," Stan says. "I need to go for a walk or something. I need to, like. Think."

"Why are you being so calm and fucking weird?" Kyle asks. His voice is shaking, and he wants to cry when Stan lets go of him.

"That's what I have to think about," Stan says. He walks backward, takes off his hat and scratches his fingers through his messy hair. "Look, don't freak out. Stop breathing like that, Kyle, Jesus."

"Don't tell me how to breathe!"

"I'll come over later," Stan says. "Just, um. Yeah. I gotta go." He starts to walk away, then turns back. "You're not going to stay here by yourself, are you?"

"I don't know!" Kyle says. He can't seem to stop shouting, his voice echoing around the empty clearing. "I don't know what the fuck is going on!"

"C'mere," Stan says, holding his hand out. "You shouldn't be here by yourself."

"Why the hell not? Maybe I want to be!" Kyle is suddenly and extremely angry, partly at himself but mostly at Stan, who just rolls his eyes.

"Fine," Stan says. "Just don't get near the ice."

"Oh, thanks, I was going to go jump on it like it was a trampoline."

"Why are you being a jerk?" Stan asks.

"I don't know! I thought you had to go walk and think or whatever? Go if you're gonna!"

"Kyle, Jesus Christ." Stan sighs and leaves, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Kyle watches him go, still hyperventilating, though it's sort of forced, and once Stan is gone he's breathing normally again, alone in the clearing.

"What the fuck," Kyle whispers, to himself, or to the clearing. He turns around to look into the woods, the hairs on the back of his neck standing as he anticipates the arrival of some mystical creature or malevolent force. There's nothing, just soggy pines and stale, untouched snow that's hanging around from the last real storm. Kyle puts his hands in his pockets and walks into the woods. He feels petulant and cheated, though he's the one who maybe ruined things by fucking _kissing_ _Stan_. He groans and winces as he stamps his boots into stiff snow drifts that become powdery after he's crushed them. He wants to wreck something or get lost, to make everyone worry. Stan will come to his senses during his walk and realize that Kyle can no longer be trusted not to suddenly behave like a lunatic, thereby dissolving their best friendship, which, really, has been kind of tense lately anyway.

It's not that they're not close anymore; in some ways they're closer than ever. They've always been able to communicate without needing to speak, and their sense of telepathy has sharpened as they've gotten older. Kyle can tell when Stan is getting depressed or enraged or experiencing some lethal combination of the two, and he can usually calm him down with an understanding look. Stan can do the same when Kyle starts to lose it over Cartman's bullshit, and most of the time the solution for modulating their moods is to go somewhere alone together and not even talk for awhile. It's not uncomfortable to be quiet in Stan's presence, or to have him get silent and still, something that used to make Kyle feel like Stan actually did think he was just a piece of shit. They'll go to Stan's bedroom, or to Kyle's, if Kyle's mother isn't on his ass about something, and they'll stretch out on the bed and read, or watch videos on Kyle's netbook, or Kyle will do these things and Stan will fall asleep next to him. Stan is still doing football and he's always tired. Kyle doesn't exactly _watch_ him sleep, but he checks, periodically, that Stan is still sleeping, and sometimes forgets to look away until Stan sighs or twitches.

He stops walking and stands still in the middle of the woods, checking over his shoulder to make sure he's completely alone. When it's confirmed that he is, he licks his lips, timid but thorough, trying to find the taste of Stan. It's there, just faintly, a kind of lingering heat. Kyle's dick gets a little hard as he imagines that the tongue on his lips could be Stan's, that Stan could taste him if he wanted to. He groans and keeps walking until he's not hard anymore, hating himself. Stan is probably with Kenny, telling him all about what happened. They'll both be understanding and _nice_ and Kyle will want to kill them for it, or maybe he'll just want to kill himself. He thinks of the pond and shudders, walking further away from it. He doesn't want to die. He wants to go back in time and not do what he just did. He still can't figure out why the fuck he did it, why it felt like a simple thing that would be met with no surprise from Stan. In that moment, in that fucking clearing, while they held each other like that, it seemed like something they'd already done a thousand times.

He reaches Barstow Road and walks alongside it, toward home. Once there, he goes straight for his room, throws his coat on the floor and pulls back the comforter on his bed. He stares at the blankets from two years ago, the mysterious ones that Stan doesn't know he still has, because if he did he would obsess over them, and Kyle is so tired of Stan obsessing over that day. Kyle is obsessed with it, too, but he doesn't want to solve any fucking mysteries or get visited by spirits at the clearing or whatever the hell Stan is up to. He wants to sit in Stan's lap again, and rub his face against Stan's neck, and feel glad to be alive specifically because Stan was there when he emerged from the water, and because Stan held him like he'd never let him go. Kyle growls with frustration and yanks the blankets off of his bed.

Fuck this. He's gay and Stan isn't. He sort of always knew it, somewhere in the back of his mind, but now he can't deny it. He opens his closet and throws the blankets into it, then feels guilty as he stares down at them. They meant something, once. Stan is right; something did happen that day. Kyle fell in love with Stan for real, though he was too young to know what was happening at the time. It took him two years to figure it out, and he's pretty sure Stan has, too, now that he's been kissed. Kyle slams the closet door shut, leaving the blankets inside.

He gets in bed and lies on his side, feeling like a helium balloon that's been released into the atmosphere, adrift and hopeless, no longer connected to anything. He would have been happy just being Stan's friend. Maybe. Mostly. It would have been better than this, anyway. Someone knocks on his bedroom door, and Kyle goes tense against the mattress.

"Bubbeh?" It's his mother. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. I'm fine."

"Are you decent?"

This is her way of checking to make sure he's not masturbating. He's only done it a few times, and mostly lost the desire to try it again when she found a stain on his sheets and sat him down for a long talk about how it's perfectly natural.

"I'm taking a nap," Kyle says. "Go away."

"Where's Stanley?"

"I don't know. God! Mom! What do you want? I'm trying to sleep."

"Kyle, why are you sleeping in the middle of the day? Are you coming down with something? I'm coming in, I need to check your temperature."

"Mom, no-"

She comes in anyway, a basket of laundry under her arm. She sets it down near Kyle's bedroom door and walks over to the bed. He lies there scowling while she checks his forehead. Her hand smells like dill pickles, and this makes Kyle's stomach growl. He forgot to eat breakfast.

"What's the matter?" his mother asks, sitting on the end of his bed. "You seem upset."

"I'm not upset!"

"Kyle, don't shout! What's going on? Did you and Stanley have a little fight?"

"Why do you assume it would be a 'little' fight? Maybe it was a huge fight." Kyle rolls over and moans with mortification, unable to believe that he's actually considering confiding in his mother about this. He hides his face in his pillow.

"Sweetheart," she says.

"What? Leave me alone."

"Kyle! Oi, I can't believe you'll be a teenager next year. What did you and Stan fight about?"

"Nothing," he says. Strangely, he wants to tell her. His face gets hot against his pillow. "We didn't even fight. Not really."

"So why are you upset? Talk to me, bubbeh, you're making me worried."

Kyle groans. None of the other guys at school actually talk to their mothers, he's sure. Well, Stan does, but Stan is kind of a mama's boy, and they don't talk about anything real, they just watch nature shows together when they're feeling depressed. Cartman talks to his mother only to order her around, and Kyle is pretty sure Butters isn't allowed to speak to either of his parents unless spoken to. Kenny definitely doesn't talk to his mother about whatever's going on between him and Wendy, though Kyle supposes there's really not much to say about that. Kenny is a boy, Wendy is a girl, and they obviously like each other. No discussion necessary.

"Mom," Kyle says, sitting up. He gives her a miserable look, his shoulders slumped. "Will you make me a sandwich?"

"Of course, bubbeleh, but you should really tell me-"

"I kissed Stan," Kyle blurts. "By accident."

"Oh boy."

"Yeah. And he said he had to think about it. Actually, first he made me kiss him again." Kyle frowns. He hasn't yet given that part much thought, somehow.

"Ach, okay. C'mon, come downstairs. Your father is at Ike's Odyssey of the Mind competition. We have the house to ourselves."

Downstairs, his mother makes him a giant corned beef sandwich with cold cuts they just got from the deli yesterday, after synagogue. She makes it the way he likes, on rye bread with mustard and sauerkraut, and even serves it with a pickle on the side. Kyle devours it while she sits across the table and stares at him, waiting for him to talk.

"Thanks, Mom," he says, his mouth full. She almost never fixes lunch for him anymore; he's expected to do it himself on school nights, so that his lunch bag will be ready to grab when they rush out the door in the morning.

"You're welcome, bubbeh. Now are you ready to tell me more about this, ah. Development?"

"There's nothing more to say. I kissed him. He kissed me like he was doing some kind of science experiment, then he left. Now I hate myself. The end."

"Kyle! You don't hate yourself."

"I don't? Okay."

"Don't be a smart ass. I'm proud of you, honey. I'm just, ah. I hope this won't ruin your friendship. I know how important Stan is to you."

"Um, it pretty much definitely just ruined our friendship, but thanks."

"Don't be so pessimistic! You didn't say he was mad at you. Did he say anything mean?"

"No." Kyle puts his sandwich down and frowns. "You're not even entertaining the possibility that maybe he'll come back from walking around and thinking about this and actually, like. Be gay?"

Kyle hears himself say this, sees the queasy look on his mother's face and groans. He shoves his plate away and folds his arms on the table so he can rest his head on them.

"Kyle, don't be so glum. This is a big day for you! You're not going to have to suffer all that horrible confusion during your teenage years. You're okay with being gay, and that's-"

"No, I'm not!" Kyle says, lifting his head. "I don't even think I am. I mean. Well. I hated Queer Eye for the Straight Guy! Remember? I don't want to dress like that, or like Mr. Slave, or like Big Gay Al-"

"Kyle, don't be ignorant. There are lots of different ways to behave when you're a gay man, not all of them are flamboyant-"

"Why aren't you even acting surprised?" Kyle asks, beginning to deeply regret telling her this.

"Honey, ah, well-"

"You _knew_? How?"

"I didn't know, of course not! We just suspected, your father and I-"

"Oh, God, you talk about this with _Dad_? Why did you suspect?"

"Because of the way you are with Stanley, bubbeh! It's really rather sweet, we just always worried that, ah, you'd get your heart broken-"

"Well, thanks for knowing ahead of time that Stan would reject me!" Kyle says, shouting. He stands from the table, glowering at his mother. "You and Dad might have filled me in and spared me some humiliation."

"Kyle, stop, don't get upset-"

"Don't get upset? Ugh, God, why did I tell you this? You're such a jerk whenever I need you to be nice! You're the worst mother ever!"

"Kyle!"

He stomps back upstairs, though he really wants to flee the house entirely. He's not sure where he could go if he did; Stan's house is off limits, obviously, and if he went to Kenny's and found Stan there, consulting Kenny about the morning's events, he would die of humiliation. Cartman isn't even a remote option, and Butters would just infuriate him in his current state of mind. Kyle would end up snapping at him and feeling guilty later. He locks his bedroom door to keep his mother out and crawls back into his bed. This is the beginning of his new, terrible life. His mother will probably tell everyone he's gay by way of joining PFLAG, he'll replace Butters as the kid who everyone calls a fag all the live long day at school, Stan will start screwing chicks in the coming years, possibly even cheerleaders, and Kyle will shrivel into a husk of his former self, ridiculed and pitied. His only joy in life will be gay porn, the thought of which actually really disgusts him, but nobody will believe that once word gets out that he kissed a boy.

He falls asleep with his pillow over his head and has a bad dream about Stan impregnating Cartman's mom. They name the baby Eric II and he comes out looking like Kyle's cousin Kyle, so Kyle ends up wanting to simultaneously defend and destroy the creature, who is persecuted by his jealous older brother. He wakes up to the sound of someone trying to open his locked bedroom door, a disgusting taste lingering his mouth from the combination of sauerkraut, mustard, and dill pickle.

"Mom, leave me alone," Kyle says, making his voice pathetic instead of angry, because he does sort of want to apologize. That dream was scary and he needs a fucking hug.

"Dude, it's me," Stan says. "Let me in."

Kyle sits up in bed and stares at the door, groggy and disoriented. Maybe it was _all_ a bad dream. He's willing to entertain the idea.

"Dude?" Stan says, trying the door again. "Kyle?"

Stan sounds fairly desperate to get to him, which Kyle appreciates as he hurries to the door and unlocks it. Maybe Kyle's mom is the pessimistic one. Maybe Stan came here to grab him and kiss him again.

As soon as Kyle opens the door he knows that's not the case. Stan looks nervous, like the hopeful expression on Kyle's face is worrying. He's changed out of his church clothes, his jacket open over a green sweater and jeans.

"Hey," Stan says. "Can I come in?"

Kyle shrugs and walks back into the room, not ready to hear the speech that Stan has worked up over the past few hours, probably with the help of Kenny and possibly even Wendy. The lets-still-be-friends bullshit won't mean much now that Kyle has wrecked that with his – lust. He winces, thinking of it this way, facing away from Stan. He hears Stan close the bedroom door behind him.

"Are you okay?" Stan asks.

"I'm great. What do you want?"

"Kyle, c'mon. Look at me."

"No. Did you have a nice walk?"

"Kyle." Stan groans. "Are you mad that I left you there? You are. Sorry, just. I didn't know what to do. But I think I've figured it out."

"Yeah?" Kyle turns around, unable to stop himself from growing hopeful again. Stan has pulled his hat off and he's worrying it between his hands, still looking nervous.

"I'm not gay," Stan says.

"Me either," Kyle says, though he knows it's pointless to lie to Stan, especially now.

"But I liked it," Stan says, stepping closer. "When I kissed you. It was, like. I want to do it again."

"Oh." Kyle stares at Stan, trying to feel relieved. "Wait. What?"

"I just think we should have rules," Stan says, turning red. "So that it can be a thing that we do, like we used to, um. When there was a thunderstorm and you'd get in my bed? You know? When we were little, I thought that was normal."

"Yeah," Kyle says, and he has to drag his eyes away from Stan's, because he feels like they're melting him. He stares at Stan's shoulder. "I thought so, too."

"But we're just weird. Me and you. But it doesn't bother me," he says hurriedly. Kyle frowns.

"What did you mean by rules?" he asks.

"About kissing." Stan's face gets redder. "Because that's all I ever want to do, okay? I don't want to see your dick."

"I don't want to see yours, either!" Kyle says, shouting, and it's true. "Ever! That's disgusting!" Stan smiles, looking relieved.

"See, good," he says. "But the kissing thing, I don't know. You liked it, right?"

"It was okay," Kyle says, muttering.

"Want to try it again real quick to make sure you liked it?" Stan asks, hurrying to him. Kyle fidgets and stares at Stan's chest, not sure how to answer. He's not feeling very tenderly toward Stan at the moment. He sort of wants to punch Stan's fucking face, but he also wants the taste of Stan on his lips again.

"Alright," Kyle says, meeting Stan's eyes. There's something new there that Kyle can't read, and it hits him like a fist to the gut, making his stomach clench.

"Ready?" Stan asks, already lowering his face.

"Um," Kyle says, and Stan kisses him.

It lasts longer this time, and Kyle counts the seconds so that he won't faint or throw up or do anything else incriminating. After five seconds of pushing their dry lips together in uncertain twitches, Stan pulls back. He looks sleepy for a moment, as if doing that took a lot of his energy. He straightens up and raises his eyebrows.

"So?" he says.

"Yes," Kyle says, breathing this out, nodding. "Yes, okay."

They make a kissing schedule. Stan thinks they should limit it to once a week, lest things get out of hand, and Kyle agrees. He's feeling kind of queasy and overwhelmed, and can't imagine doing this on a daily basis. Stan suggests Sundays, and Kyle vetoes that. They agree on Wednesdays after school, when Stan is free from football practice and Kyle doesn't have any afterschool meetings.

"We should meet at the clearing," Stan says. They're sitting on Kyle's bed, an arm's length apart. Kyle makes a face.

"Why there?"

"'Cause it's private. Our parents aren't going to burst in or anything. Also." Stan shrugs. "That's where it first happened."

"Aren't you gonna ask me why I did it?" Kyle asks after an awkward pause, both of them staring at the carpet.

"Nah," Stan says. "I know why."

"Why?" Kyle asks, desperate for Stan to explain this to him.

"Cause, dude. It just made sense at the time." Stan looks over at Kyle sheepishly, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "I felt it, too, okay?"

"Okay," Kyle says, mortified, and not sure what Stan means by 'it.'

After ten minutes of uncomfortable, mumbled conversation, Stan makes an excuse about needing to get home and help his mother put together an IKEA end table. He's better at following directions than his father, though Randy claims Stan is good at constructing IKEA furniture only because he has smaller hands. Kyle walks him to the door.

"We just have to be really strict about once a week," Stan says when they get there, turning to Kyle. "Because, you know. Otherwise."

"I told you I'm fine with once a week," Kyle says, offended, as if Stan assumes that Kyle wants to be kissed goodbye, which, actually, he does. "And whenever you want to cancel it, just tell me."

"Cancel it?"

"Yeah, dude, when you get a new girlfriend!" Anticipating this makes Kyle feel crumpled and cast off already, a discarded draft of Stan's life that's sailing toward a trash can. "You can't be kissing me if, you know. There's a girl."

"Same for you, then," Stan says. "If you want to cancel it."

"Duh," Kyle says, though he should have mentioned that himself; he was operating under the assumption that they're both perfectly aware that Stan will be the one to end this.

"So," Stan says, lingering there, his hand on the doorknob. "Maybe since this is the inaugural day, we should do it one more time."

"The _inaugural_ _day_?"

"Shut up for a second," Stan says, and Kyle is already closing his eyes, pushing his lips out to meet Stan's as they press against his. He forgets to count the seconds this time, and forgets to be the one who breaks the kiss. Stan does, again, and he sighs in Kyle's face. "Shit," he says, under his breath.

"What?" Kyle asks. He's teetering between wanting Stan to take his weirdness and get the hell out of here and wanting him to keep coming up with excuses to kiss him one more time, one more time.

"Nothing," Stan says. "Bye."

Kyle sits on his bed for awhile after Stan has gone, thinking. Stan left the door open, and Kyle can hear his mother moving around downstairs, dishes clinking in the kitchen and the dryer door opening and closing in the laundry room. He's shocked that she hasn't come up to interview him about what Stan said. Guiltily, he gets up and pads downstairs, finding her paging through the Sunday paper at the dining room table, clipping out an article.

"Mommy?" he says, leaning in the doorway. He feels stupid; he hasn't called her that in years. She looks up at him.

"Oh, hello," she says. "Are you speaking to me again?"

"Mom, I'm sorry," Kyle says. He walks into the dining room and falls to a seat at the table. "It's just been a really weird fucking day."

"Kyle," she says, scolding him. She sighs and puts the scissors down. "Bubbeh, are you okay?" she asks, reaching over to touch his cheek.

"Yeah," Kyle says, and it's true. "Aren't you going to ask me what happened with Stan? You saw him come in and leave, right?"

"I saw, but I didn't want to press. Don't look so shocked," she says when he rears backward. "I do have some tact, you know, even when it comes to my children."

Kyle wants to say _since_ _when_? but he just sits there, feeling dazed. The newspaper article she clipped out is about discount airfares to Europe.

"What's that for?" Kyle asks.

"Oh, I was going to send it to your aunt Ruth, she was talking about wanting to to go Italy. Ach, look at my hands," she says, rubbing at an ink stain. She looks up at Kyle and _tsks_. "I got it on your cheek, too. Come here, bubbeh, let me clean you up."

She takes him into the kitchen and uses a damp dish towel to clean his cheek before washing her hands. Kyle stands beside her, hovering, not sure what he wants from her at the moment.

"Can I have an antacid?" he asks when she gives him a questioning look as she dries her hands.

"Of course, bubbeh. Did that corned beef hurt your tummy?"

"Mom, God. Don't call it my 'tummy,'" Kyle says, frowning. "But. Yes."

She gives him two Tums tablets, green and yellow, and he wonders as he crunches them between his teeth if she avoided the pink ones on account of his present sensitivity about gayness. The pink is actually his favorite flavor. She knows that, and usually fishes around in the bottle until she finds two pink ones for him.

"Honey, is there something you want to say?" she asks when Kyle follows her back into the dining room. Kyle frowns and thinks about this question.

"Oh," he says. "Um, I'm sorry about, you know. Saying you're the worst mother ever. You're not."

"I meant about Stan and your sexuality and all that," she says. "I know I'm not actually the worst mother in the world, but thank you for saying so. Do you want to talk, bubbeh?"

"I actually don't think I do," Kyle says. "Just, like. Don't go around telling everyone I'm gay or whatever, 'cause I'm not even sure if I am."

"Of course I won't tell anyone! Come here." She pushes his hat back so she can kiss his forehead, and holds his cheeks for a moment afterward. "I wish you wouldn't cover up your beautiful hair," she says. He rolls his eyes.

"Okay," he says. "I'm going up to do my homework."

"That's good, go ahead. I'll be down here if you want to talk."

He doesn't want to talk, not to her, and wonders if he wants to talk to Kenny. He decides he doesn't want that, either, and actually spends the next two hours doing homework, pausing only a few times to run his tongue over his lips and think about Stan.

At the bus stop on Monday, Kyle is afraid things might be weird between him and Stan, but Stan smiles and waves when he sees Kyle, and Kyle waves back, suppressing the urge to dash forward and jump on Stan with relief. Cartman is already there, complaining that his mother's boyfriend's dog bit him. Stan doesn't seem to be listening.

"Hey, dude," he says when Kyle stands beside him. "Did you do the math homework?"

"Yeah," Kyle says.

"Fuck. I forgot to."

"So anyway," Cartman says loudly, trying to recapture their attention. "I called the police, obviously."

"The police?" Stan says. "What for?"

"Because that bastard turned his fucking dog on me! And he pretty much got arrested. The dog, too. Or, anyway, the dog got, like, animal controlled. It was killer."

"Where did the dog bite you?" Kyle asks.

"Right here," Cartman says, lifting up the left ankle of his jeans. Kyle has to bend down and squint to see a faint scratch that looks like it could have been made by an overexcited puppy's paw.

"They didn't arrest someone over that," Stan says. "You're lying."

"They did, so!" Cartman says, enraged. "I mean, maybe more because the guy had a bunch of weed on him when the cops showed up-"

"What kind of dog was it?" Stan asks.

"I don't know, some kind of like, pit bull thing, probably."

"Cartman, that is not a fucking dog bite," Stan says. "What if they took the dog to a kill shelter or something? You could have killed an innocent animal just to get your mom's boyfriend out of your house!"

"That thing wasn't innocent!" Cartman says, sputtering. Kenny and Butters are approaching, and Kyle is glad; hopefully they can absorb the burden of Cartman so that he can talk to Stan.

"Hey, fellas," Butters says. Kyle tries not to be irritated by Butters' flouncy yellow scarf, a particularly gay accessory even for him. Normally Kyle wouldn't care if Butters showed up in leather pants and a tube top, but he supposes he has to consider himself part of Butters' fraternity now. "What's going on?" Butters asks, his thumbs hooked through the straps of his backpack.

"Not much, Stan is just acting like a pussy as usual," Cartman says. He frowns at Kenny and Butters, looking back and forth between them. "Did you guys walk to the bus stop together? Aw, how cute. Does Wendy know you have a new girlfriend, Kenny?"

"Here, tubby, he's all yours," Kenny says, taking Butters by the shoulders and presenting him to Cartman, who scowls.

"Don't rub Butters on me, Kenny, sick!"

"Cartman was just bragging that he killed a dog," Stan says, starting to get worked up.

"I didn't kill shit!" Cartman says. "I would have, though, if that thing bit me again."

"You got bit by a dog?" Butters asks, bringing his fists up to his mouth fearfully.

"It's not a bite," Stan says. "It's just a little scratch."

"Oh, Eric!" Butters swoons toward him, and Kyle groans inwardly. "Are you okay? Did you put antibacterial ointment on it?"

Kyle ignores them and turns to Stan, searching his eyes for any sign of regret or discomfort about what happened yesterday. Stan just looks angry on behalf of Cartman's mother's boyfriend's dog.

"Sup," Kenny says, inserting himself between Kyle and Stan.

"Stan forgot to do his math homework," Kyle says, wanting to take Stan's mind off of the dog and its potentially unsavory fate. "Did you remember?"

"Unit 7?" Kenny says. "The problem sets?"

"Yeah," Kyle says, still unnerved by Kenny's sudden interest in academics. Kenny nods.

"Me and Wendy did that shit on Saturday," he says, looking proud of himself. "It was easy."

"Yeah," Kyle says, though he actually thought it was kind of a hard assignment. He elbows Stan. "You can copy mine on the bus," he says.

"Thanks," Stan says. "I think I'd rather copy Kenny's, though."

"Stan!"

"Sorry, he's just really good at math!"

It's true, which is strange. All through elementary school, Kenny was disinterested and therefore dim when it came to answering questions in class. Now he acts like their math is remedial. Kyle thinks it must be Wendy's influence, and that kissing her must be pretty fucking amazing if it can get Kenny to actually do homework and stop stealing his dad's liquor, but that makes no sense, because Stan let Wendy's apparent amazingness go without a fight, and was only vaguely annoyed at Kenny for moving in on her. Now Stan claims to be glad that Wendy is with Kenny, since Kenny seems so much happier these days, and actually talks instead of just mumbling things into his hood.

The week at school passes quickly, and by Tuesday night Kyle is feeling anxious. Stan hasn't mentioned their upcoming appointment on Wednesday or talked about anything to do with kissing since he left Kyle's house on Sunday, and Kyle is starting to feel like he imagined the whole fucking thing. He worries that Stan will forget about Wednesday, which Kyle has been both looking forward to and dreading. He's afraid that he won't be good at kissing once he tries to do it more intentionally, as opposed to in a dream-like fog of emotional confusion, and he's worried that it won't feel as good as he's remembering, because how could putting your dry lips against someone's mouth really feel that good, but he's mostly just worried that he'll go to that clearing and find it empty.

That last concern ends up being a non-issue, because Stan finds Kyle at the buses after school on Wednesday and asks if he's ready to go.

"To go?" Kyle says, freezing in mid-stride.

"Yeah, to the clearing?" Stan raises his eyebrows, and Kyle can't tell if he's trying to be suggestive or cute, or maybe he's just surprised that Kyle is so confused by this question. Kyle has been a nervous wreck about this all day, waiting for even the barest hint that Stan was thinking about it, too, and now here Stan is, in the middle of the crowd of kids who are boarding the buses, acting like this is a given and Kyle needs to get with the program.

"What are you guys doing?" Kenny asks, appearing just as Kyle was beginning to feel relieved and excited. Wendy is with Kenny, standing unnecessarily close to him, as usual.

"We're gonna walk to the public library," Stan says. "To, um. You know, research. For that history project."

"Oh, can me and Kenny come?" Wendy asks. "I've been meaning to-"

"No," Stan says.

"Sorry?" she says, eyebrows going up.

"I said no, you guys can't come. Bye!" He takes Kyle's shoulder and pulls him away. Kyle looks back at Kenny and Wendy, his lips flapping stupidly as he tries to come up with an excuse for them, which apparently Stan doesn't think is necessary. Kenny is grinning and Wendy looks pissed.

"Dude," Kyle says to Stan, whispering. "They're gonna, like. Suspect something! Oh, shit, you haven't told Kenny already, have you?"

"Hell no, I haven't told Kenny," Stan says. They're around the side of the school now, headed toward the woods that can be cut through in order to get to Stark's Pond. "And who cares what he suspects?"

"Stan, Jesus! You might want to be a little more worried about people finding out about – this. I mean, if girls hear that we, uh, you know. They won't want to date you!"

"The girls at this school suck," Stan says. "So. Not a problem."

"What about in high school?"

"Kyle, I don't know, fuck. What did you want me to do, tell them they could come along so we'd actually have to go to the library and do research?"

"No!"

"Well, there you go."

When they arrive at the clearing, Kyle doesn't put his hand out like he usually does, and Stan doesn't take hold of it. They walk to the exact middle of the clearing, stiffly, and Kyle pretends to need to smooth down the front of his jacket for a few seconds before daring to look up at Stan.

"Did you change your mind?" Stan asks. His breath is a little labored, as if they ran here. Kyle shakes his head.

"No, did you?"

"No." Stan swallows; Kyle can hear it. "I'm gonna hold your hands," Stan says, and he pulls off his gloves.

"Alright." Kyle takes his gloves off, too, his heart beating faster as he does. He puts his gloves in his jacket pockets and looks up at Stan again as they reach for each other's hands. Stan doesn't squeeze Kyle's, just holds them a little timidly, his fingers shaking. He tugs Kyle closer, and Kyle makes an embarrassing noise, surprised.

"Close your eyes," Stan says. Kyle obeys, smelling Stan's lunch on his breath: they ate together as always, and Stan complained about his peanut butter and jelly. Kyle has been looking forward to tasting that particular combination of flavors all day, though he hopes Stan won't do anything crazy like try to get their tongues involved.

Stan keeps his lips closed, but he seems to have prepared himself for the kissing this time, because his lips are smooth and tingly from that medicated chapstick he uses. Kyle feels bad about his own lips, which are scratchy and dry; he considered asking to use some of Bebe's Carmex but didn't want to seem like he was trying too hard. Kyle loses the ability to count as the kiss continues past four seconds, and when Stan pulls back he takes two shallow breaths, his eyes locked on Kyle's in a way that simultaneously scares and comforts him.

"Do you care if I do it again?" Stan asks. Kyle shakes his head and closes his eyes when Stan's lips crush against his, still closed and moving only in the tiniest twitches, maybe involuntarily. Kyle tries to match Stan's movements, pushing his lips forward a bit when Stan does.

"One more time," Stan says before he's even really stopped the second kiss, his fingers tightening around Kyle's. This kiss is short, but seemingly only so that Stan can pull back, breathe against Kyle's lips and say, "One more time," again before resuming.

"Okay, that's enough," Stan says, stopping abruptly and stepping backward, letting go of Kyle's hands. He looks almost pissed off for a second, then just uncomfortable, adjusting his jacket and looking around the clearing like he's afraid someone might have spotted them. His cheeks are pink. Kyle isn't sure that his aren't; he feels like he's barely connected to the earth, swaying on his feet. Stan puts his hand out and Kyle takes it, stumbling a little as Stan leads him out of the clearing. Once they're past the tree line, Stan lets go.

They don't talk until they've made their way around the pond, into the parking lot where only a few cars remain. The daylight is lasting longer, but South Park is still in winter mode for the most part, people going home after work or school and huddling there against the cold that lingers. Kyle puts his gloves back on and dares a look at Stan, who is so thoughtful and silent that Kyle is afraid he's about to be told that what just happened will never happen again.

"We should have an upper limit," Stan says.

"Huh?"

"Like, a maximum amount of times that we do that on Wednesdays," Stan says. He sneaks a look at Kyle, and he still seems aggravated, but Kyle can't manage to take it personally. "What do you think? Ten?"

"Ten!" Kyle fails to conceal his excitement. "Yeah, um. Ten sounds good."

Stan nods and smiles a little. "Dude, why are you letting me do this?" he asks.

"I don't know." Kyle looks away from him and tries to decide if he should allow Stan to go on thinking that Kyle is doing him a favor. "I mean. Why do you want to do it in the first place?"

"Because it's just – good," Stan says. "Don't you think it's good?"

"Obviously," Kyle says. "Just-" He stops talking, afraid to ruin this by asking too many questions. What just took place in the clearing was pretty definitively the best thing that's ever happened to him in his life. He never thought Stan could want something like that from him, but he does, he wants it really bad. It's making Kyle feel like he was secretly amazing all along and just never knew it.

"What?" Stan says, and Kyle tries to stop smiling. He shrugs.

"What are we gonna tell Wendy and Kenny if they end up going to the library and see that we're not there?" Kyle asks.

"We'll tell them we were abducted by aliens," Stan says. "I don't give a crap what those two think."

"You're still mad at them, aren't you? For getting together?"

"No," Stan says, but Kyle can see that he is, and the other side of this effervescent epiphany about his own possible amazingness hits him hard: now he's going to have to worry, all the time and in a brand new way, that Stan could end up liking someone else better than him.

For the remainder of the year, the kissing arrangement is remarkably uncomplicated. Kyle keeps waiting for Stan to either tire of it or confess that once a week is not enough and he wants it all the time, but Stan continues to bring him to the clearing on Wednesdays after school, and occasionally to other locations, just to throw off anybody who might be trailing them out of curiosity, such as Cartman, who has theorized that they walk home together on Wednesdays so they can have sex with each other in a ditch on the side of the road 'or something.' All it takes to get him to stop asking questions is a single mention of the fact that he still has a sleepover with Butters every Saturday night. Kyle knows he shouldn't be all that surprised that Cartman is gay, considering past actions involving Butters' dick and Cartman's mouth, but it still makes him feel all the more gross about the fact that he probably - definitely - is gay himself. He doesn't want anything in common with Cartman and Butters. He wants to feel the way Stan must, as if this is just some super best friends way to blow off steam and means nothing about the future or their feelings for each other, beyond the fact that they'd trust each other with anything.

Kyle doesn't feel that way. As his bar mitzvah approaches, he can think about almost nothing other than what he's grudgingly accepted over the past year, during approximately fifty Wednesdays during which he's been kissed around one hundred and sixty times, with an average of three kisses per Wednesday: he's deeply, irreversibly, punishingly in love with Stan, and he wants to kiss him with goddamn _tongues_ already, and possibly even do things involving their dicks, though maybe not right away, just eventually.

"What am I supposed to get you for your birthday?" Stan asks Kyle when they're riding home on the bus after the last day of school before summer break, which is generally when they discuss Kyle's birthday plans.

"Supposed to get me?" Kyle says, confused. "I don't know, dude, look at my Amazon wish list."

"Yeah, but it's not just a regular birthday," Stan says. "It's your _manhood_ birthday." He grins like this is clever or something. Kyle snorts.

"I'm sure my mom will hand over the car keys and abolish my curfew," Kyle says. "Dude, get me whatever. There aren't, like. Special bar mitzvah-specific gifts. Except maybe money."

"I'm not giving you money," Stan says. "What do you want, then?" he asks, elbowing Kyle. "Just tell me."

"I don't know," Kyle says, staring at the seat in front of them. He's obsessed with the many things he wants from Stan at this point in his life, but he's not about to ask Stan to suck on his neck as a birthday present.

"Fine," Stan says. "You're just gonna have to take whatever I pick and like it."

Kyle sniffs and nods, pressing his backpack more firmly over his lap. Later, when he's alone in bed, he's going to think more about Stan telling him to take something and like it, but for now he needs to get that the fuck out of his mind.

"I know what I'm getting him," Kenny says, popping up over the seat in front of them, apparently eavesdropping. Kenny has taken a kind of weird, almost fatherly interest in them in the past few years, and it makes Kyle nervous mostly because he's afraid Kenny discusses their emotional development with Wendy, though she seems far less interested in them.

"Don't tell him," Stan says. He gets up onto his knees. "Whisper it in my ear."

Kenny does, and Kyle fidgets, annoyed by the thought of Kenny's mouth on Stan's ear, which is one of those places where Kyle has been wanting to put his mouth very badly. He only ever kisses Stan on the lips, and finds himself wanting to kiss Stan's cheeks, and eyelids, and his irritatingly perfect nose, but all of that is off limits according to their mostly unspoken arrangement.

"Oh, Jesus," Stan says, grinning when he drops back into the seat beside Kyle. "He'll love that."

"I think so," Kenny says, smiling at Kyle, who flicks him off. "What!" Kenny says. "You ingrate."

"Nothing, I don't know," Kyle says, not willing to explain why Kenny is on his nerves at the moment. "Get out of here, we're having a conversation."

"I am so excited about this bar mitzvah, seriously," Kenny says, and it seems true, which is freaking Kyle out. "I've never been to one."

"Of course you haven't," Kyle says. "I'm the only Jew you know."

"Yeah, and I always thought I'd get to go to your bar mitzvah," Kenny says, looking wistful. Kyle occasionally still suspects him of being high all the time, though Wendy claims he's gone straight edge. Kyle knows for a fact that Kenny is a big fan of beer and will drink it when he can, such as when Stan sneaks a few from his dad's supply and they drink them in Kenny's backyard. Kyle abstains whenever he's present for this, terrified that his mother would smell it on him even after extensive teeth brushing and mouthwash swilling.

"Hey, question," Clyde says, tugging on Kyle's elbow from across the aisle. "Can I bring a date to your bar mitzvah?"

"No," Kyle says, and for some reason this makes Stan laugh. Clyde's face falls.

"How come you didn't invite Becca?" he asks.

"I didn't invite any girls," Kyle says, which is a lie; he invited both Wendy and Bebe, but they're not supposed to tell. "Cause then I would have had to invite all of them."

"Why couldn't you just invite all of them?" Clyde asks.

"My family isn't interested in feeding the entire seventh grade class!" Kyle says, and he hears himself getting overly loud. The truth is that he didn't invite the girls because he didn't want one of them trying to dance with Stan, though Bebe might betray Kyle and attempt it. Stan is popular with the girls, who are always cornering Kyle and asking him if he knows who Stan 'likes.'

When the bus reaches their stop, Kenny gives Wendy his usual dramatic goodbye kiss, and Kyle groans, stuck standing in the aisle until they're through. The bus driver yells at them to get off if they're gonna, and the three of them follow Cartman and Butters off the bus. Butters' actual bus stop is about two miles away, and it's a long walk home for such a hapless kid, but he always gets off with Cartman.

Thinking of it that way makes Kyle wrinkle his nose as the five of them walk toward Stan's house. They're headed to Stan's house for last day of school festivities: video games and take out pizza.

"Next year is gonna be so sweet," Cartman says. "We're gonna fucking rule that school." He's smiling to himself, already plotting.

"Yeah, and then the year after that, we'll be the babies again," Kenny says, though he almost sounds happy about this.

"Speak for yourself, ass wipe," Cartman says. "I'm gonna make varsity and tell everybody I'm a junior. They'll totally believe me."

"Yeah, right," Kyle says, though Cartman is kind of huge, which makes him look like the oldest of the group, though he's actually the youngest. Butters is the oldest, oddly; he turned thirteen back in September. He could still pass for ten, and his voice hasn't changed. Kenny is the only one with a grown-up sounding voice, and Stan's theory is that it happened when he lost his virginity to Wendy, which is based only on Stan's wild theorizing and nothing Kenny actually said. Kyle wants to suggest to Stan that their voices might change if they did more sex stuff to each other, but maybe Stan is afraid his voice will end up sounding like Big Gay Al's if he does his first real sex stuff with a boy.

The night progresses like any other Friday: video games, some unenthusiastic fighting over the results of said video games and alleged cheating, lots of greasy pizza and full-sugar soda for everyone but Kyle, who has to drink water because Stan's mother is out of sugar free drinks. This depresses him more than it really should, because he's feeling left out, like everyone else is having more fun. Kyle is anxious about his bar mitzvah, which Butters guilted him into inviting Cartman to after Cartman's old-as-shit cat finally died, and he's nervous about Stan and Bebe, because Stan was the one who asked Kyle to invite Bebe to his bar mitzvah. For Wendy, Stan said, so she wouldn't be the only girl there, which also made Kyle jealous, because what the fuck does Stan care about Wendy's enjoyment of his birthday party? Stan has actual friends who are girls. He knows how to talk to them, maybe because he has a sister, although Shelly never speaks to Stan, as far as Kyle can tell. It might just be because Stan can talk to everyone, anyone, and because he's likable, charming and easy to be around, something that Kyle doesn't have in common with him, he's beginning to realize.

Butters has to be home by eight o'clock, and Kenny and Cartman leave soon afterward, though neither of them really have curfews. Kyle is sure that Kenny is headed for Wendy's bedroom window, if not her front door, because apparently her parents are actually starting to like him. If Cartman has evening plans, Kyle doesn't want to know about them, and he's glad to see him go. He eats ice cream with Stan; there's still some old sugar free vanilla from the last time Kyle spent the night. Stan eats the sugar free kind, too, because that's all they have.

"Fucking Clyde has some nerve," Kyle says when they're getting ready for bed, Kyle unrolling his sleeping bag and Stan stripping out of his jeans.

"Clyde?" Stan says. He goes to the bed in his boxers and t-shirt, bouncing a little when he lands against the mattress.

"Yeah, asking me to invite fucking Becca Blake to my birthday? I've talked to that girl, like, once. If Clyde would rather go on a date with her, maybe he can just not come."

"He just wants to dance with her," Stan says, sticking his bare legs under his blankets. "I mean, there's gonna be a band, right?"

"Right, but it's this dumb, awful bar mitzvah-type band that my parents picked." Kyle sits down on his sleeping bag. "Do you think you will?" he asks.

"Will what?" Stan asks.

"Dance. With girls. At the party."

"What girls am I gonna dance with?" Stan asks. "Kenny has forever dibs on Wendy, not that I'd want to dance with her, anyway."

"What about Bebe?" Kyle asks, unable to look at him. Stan groans.

"I fucking hope she won't ask me," he says. "She's always up in my face lately."

"You don't like her?"

"She's okay," Stan says. He lies down, facing Kyle. "But she gets on my nerves. She never stops talking, and she's always like, asking me what I think about shit I don't care about."

Kyle had no idea Bebe was talking to Stan on a regular basis. He sinks down to his sleeping bag and stares at the ceiling of the room. This is the beginning of the end: a party with girls, Stan getting courted.

"Dude?" Stan says.

"What - nothing - I'm tired." Kyle rolls away from him and pretends to sleep.

May is a big month for storms, especially as Kyle's birthday gets closer and the weather gets warmer. It's always jarring to wake to the first real storm of the season after a long stretch of snow storms that hit hard but more quietly. Kyle wakes up with a whine, complaining about the noise, and he jerks inside his sleeping bag when thunder booms again. He rolls onto his back to look at Stan's bedroom window, and he sees lightening flashing from behind the closed curtains. Stan is awake; Kyle can feel it even before Stan scoots to the edge of his mattress and looks down at him.

They stare at each other for a moment, Kyle's chest jittery with the automatic fear that the sound of a bad storm produces. It used to happen without hesitation: every time there was a storm, Kyle would hurry into Stan's bed and huddle there as if taking shelter from it. Stan would hold on to him like he was a poor, frightened animal, and they would twist up together as tightly as they could, until Kyle could barely differentiate Stan's breathing from his own. It's been a long time since they did that. Almost three years.

"C'mere," Stan finally says, and Kyle sits up.

"But," Kyle says, not sure what sort of protest he wants to make. He's afraid he'd get hard, mostly.

"Dude, it's okay, c'mere," Stan says, and Kyle lacks the consciousness or the willpower to resist. He crawls under Stan's blankets, trying not to look at anything too directly, especially Stan, who scoots toward the window to make room for Kyle. It was always this way, Stan putting himself between Kyle and the window, between Kyle and the danger. Kyle thinks about the meltdown Stan had that day at the clearing, the day when Kyle first kissed him, his angst over not being the one who jumped in when Kyle fell through the ice. Kenny has a thing for saving people; they've noticed that over the years. Stan only seems to have a thing for saving baby animals and Kyle.

Kyle pushes his face up against Stan's throat the way he always used to. When Stan swallows, his Adam's apple moves against Kyle's cheek. Stan smells good, like always, but stronger than usual, here in his bed. Kyle seems to be too tired to get hard, which is a relief. He smiles to himself when he feels Stan's stomach pushing against his with each breath. Stan has an arm around him, and his grip on Kyle tightens when more thunder booms outside.

"Dude," Stan says after they've been lying there for a while, arms around each other, Kyle getting close to falling back to sleep for real. Stan sounds kind of emotional, and Kyle would look up into his face, but he doesn't want to move.

"Mhm?" he says, his fingers twitching on Stan's back. Stan sighs.

"Nothing," he says. He cups his hand around Kyle's neck, gently, and the heat of Stan's palm against his skin sends Kyle down into a deep, comfortable sleep as the storm moves further away.

In the morning, Kyle wakes up while the sky is still pale gray. He stirs and tries to extract himself from Stan's grip, meeting with only a little resistance from Stan, who moans and tries to tug Kyle back to him. Kyle uncurls Stan's fingers from his side and is able to slide free. On the floor again, inside his sleeping bag, he finally gets hard, remembering the way Stan's fingers pressed into him insistently. He wraps his arm around himself and squeezes his side the way that Stan did, almost wishing he was brave enough to try to get off while Stan is up there sleeping. He doesn't need to badly enough to risk it; it's a half-erection at best. He falls asleep again, and dreams of the clearing. In the dream, Kyle is naked, and he's mortified when Stan catches him that way, but Stan just says _shhh_ and starts taking off his own clothes, putting them on Kyle.

He's had this dream maybe twenty times. In some versions, things get lucid enough for him kiss Stan in thanks, but he never allows himself to look down at Stan once he's wearing only his underwear. Though Stan is the one who's naked after giving up his clothes, he always seems calm and unashamed, while Kyle shivers and stammers and apologizes for putting Stan in this situation.

Kyle wakes again when Stan is stepping over him. He rolls onto his back and listens to the toilet flush across the hall. Stan is quickly back, and he lingers near the door when he sees that Kyle is awake.

"Hey," Stan says, like they've just run across each other on the street or something. They never talked about their nights spent cuddling each other as kids, and last night felt just as innocent to Kyle as it always has. He tries to come up with something to say, so they can talk about anything but what they're both clearly thinking about, but he's barely awake and his mind is uncooperative.

"Are you getting up for real?" Kyle asks.

"No, I just had to piss." Stan walks back across the room, stepping over Kyle on the way to his bed.

"You didn't wash your hands," Kyle says.

"I sure didn't," Stan says, and he goes back to sleep, or at least pretends to. Kyle rolls away from him and lies there thinking for awhile, unable to decide if something has changed. Later, they go downstairs and eat cereal in their pajamas, watching television until Stan's mother tells them they can't spend the whole day doing so. They dress and run off to find the rest of their friends, like always. By lunch time things seem completely normal again, and Kyle doesn't want to feel disappointed, but part of him does.

The following Wednesday, they go to the clearing together at their usual time, as if they had to wait for school to let out before they could. It's gotten a little warmer out, and they've both left their jackets at home, something that always feels like a good faith effort in encouraging summer to actually start. Kyle was chilly before they jogged to the clearing, but he's overly warm once they get there, and he can smell Stan's sweat when he steps close.

Then, abruptly, something is very different: Stan doesn't reach for Kyle's hands to hold them limply while they kiss. He takes hold of Kyle's waist, his thumbs pressing almost painfully into the dip above Kyle's hipbones, and he tugs him closer, grinning when Kyle's mouth drops open.

"Is that okay?" Stan asks when his face is half lowered to Kyle's. Kyle wants to say _fuck_ _yes_, but he's lost the ability to speak, so he just nods slowly, and he's still nodding, a little, when Stan kisses him.

Over the past year, the quality of the kisses has varied. Sometimes Stan seems distracted, sometimes Kyle is too annoyed by this whole arrangement to enjoy the days when he actually gets to do it, and sometimes the kisses are just dry and lame, still better than nothing but not the sort that will make Kyle's heart pound until three o'clock in the morning, the memory of what Stan _felt_ _like_ keeping him awake. This is one of those kisses that will reverberate through him all day and for most of the night, a lingering buzz not just on his lips but over every inch of his skin, the kind of thing he can feel along the backs of his legs. His hands are on Stan's chest, his fingers hooking around the pocket on Stan's flannel shirt, holding him in place. Stan is breathing hard when he pulls back, and he smirks when Kyle surges up to kiss him again. Kyle successfully withholds a moan as Stan's hands tighten on his waist, but just barely, and he's pretty sure Stan could feel it even if he couldn't hear it.

They kiss maybe six times, Kyle daring some little pecks at the corners of Stan's lips, wanting to travel further and kiss his cheeks, or maybe it's more like he wants to lick them. He's always been forced to carefully moderate his consumption of anything sweet, and he feels like Stan's skin would make up for that if Kyle could just spend the rest of his life licking the fuck out of him.

"Okay," Stan says when Kyle is sort of trying to climb him. "We should go, you know, we should-"

"Oh." Kyle steps back, barely knows where he is. He adjusts his jeans, and doesn't miss the fact that Stan is doing the same. "Right, yeah."

They walk out of the clearing, red-faced and foggy. Stan keeps making noises in the back of his throat like he's trying to say something, but when Kyle looks over at him he's only frowning, his eyes pointed straight ahead.

"Let me just ask you one thing," Stan finally gets out. They've made it to the other side of the pond, and Kyle is about halfway to regaining a thought process. He's pretty sure he felt Stan's tongue at one point, maybe, against his bottom lip.

"Okay," Kyle says. "What?"

Stan sighs. "The first time we did that, last year? I mean, when, um, you did that, to me? Did it feel like the real first time? To you?"

"Huh?" Kyle thinks about that day a lot, how this was initially his idea, though Stan wrested control of the whole operation pretty quickly.

"Did it feel like the first time we kissed?" Stan asks. He stops walking and stares down at Kyle, a full three inches taller now. Kyle still hasn't had his growth spurt. He's hoping that God will reward him with one if he does his bar mitzvah reading respectfully enough. This whole kissing thing has somehow restored his faith.

"I don't know," Kyle says. He thinks about it and frowns. "Not really. I remember, just. Not being surprised that I'd done it until after. Or something."

"Yeah." Stan looks away from him and scratches the back of his neck. "I don't know, Kyle," he says. "I just don't know."

"You don't know about what?" Kyle asks, beginning to panic. He tells himself, every fucking time, not to let Stan always decide when their kissing stops, and he never manages to remember that once they've started.

"I have this feeling like-" Stan squints like he's looking at something in the distance, but when Kyle turns there's nothing but pine trees and snow-capped mountains.

"Like what?" Kyle asks when Stan clams up, turning red again. Stan shrugs violently.

"Like I remember what it feels like to do things to you," Stan says, and Kyle isn't even sure why that goes right to his dick, but it does, thunderbolt-like. "I don't remember _doing_ them," Stan says, taking a step away from him. "But I remember - I have these dreams-"

"Dude, what are you talking about?" Kyle asks. He knows he should rip open his chest and pile everything he can get his hands on at Stan's feet, but he needs that stuff, too, maybe more than Stan does.

"I don't know," Stan says. He groans. "Look - forget it. I'm gonna go over to Kenny's. You want to come?"

It's an extremely strange question. Stan doesn't ask Kyle if he wants to go places with him, especially places like Kenny's house. He walks, and Kyle walks alongside him, no discussion necessary. Kyle gets the feeling he's only asking because he wants Kyle to understand that Stan doesn't want him around right now.

"Fine," Kyle says, backing away. "I mean - no. I should go home. I've got to practice for my bar mitzvah. It's next week."

"Shit," Stan says. "I still haven't gotten your present."

Kyle shrugs. "Doesn't matter," he says, mumbling, and he turns away expecting Stan to run after him and go on trying to explain his irrational behavior, but Stan walks off in the other direction, toward Kenny's.

Kyle goes home and considers jerking off, but he's too upset. He sits in bed with a print out of his bar mitzvah speech propped on his thighs and stares at it, his eyes blurring. He keeps trying to get his mind around what Stan said, but all he can hear is _I_ _remember_ _what_ _it_ _feels_ _like_ _to_ _do_ _things_ _to_ _you_, and it should be hot or something, maybe, but mostly it's distressing, because Kyle sort of feels the same way. He feels like he wants to lick Stan everywhere because he misses the way he tastes, not because he wants to find out. His breath catches when he realizes what this means: they must have fooled around with each other in their sleep. If any two people are capable of simultaneously sleepwalking their sex dreams, it's them. Kyle lies there trying to figure out how this makes him feel. Hard, mostly; he's finally able to jerk off. Afterward, he realizes something: he's never woken up to sticky boxer shorts after a night in Stan's bed. Unless he's a talented enough sleepwalker to also launder his clothes after a night of unconscious passion, his theory is blown.

Stan avoids him for a few days, claiming that he's got to shop for Kyle's birthday present. Kyle shows up to Stan's house for their usual Saturday spend the night, but there's no thunderstorm and nothing out of the ordinary, just video games and TV, some internet, and talk before bed that mostly revolves around Kyle's bar mitzvah on Monday morning. They don't talk about their memories of doing stuff to each other, which don't even feel like real memories, at least not to Kyle. It's more like an acute sense of mourning for something he's never actually had, as if there's a scar somewhere on his body that moves around when he searches for it. He can't find it, can't see it, but he knows it's there.

"You're gonna do great," Stan says when Kyle is angsting about the Torah reading again in the morning, both of them hugging their pillows.

"I can't believe Cartman is coming," Kyle says. "How do I get myself into these things? He's going to play some trick, or laugh-"

"Dude, don't worry about him. He's not obsessed with pissing you off like he used to be."

"Yeah, I guess." Kyle has noticed this over the past few years. Cartman still rags on him whenever he can, but he doesn't seek out opportunities to do so like he used to. "How come, do you think?"

"I'd say he got more mature, but I doubt it," Stan says. "It's more like, I don't know." There's a long pause, both of them watching each other, thinking the same thing, waiting to see if the other will bring it up. "I mean, he fucks around with Butters," Stan finally says. "Obviously."

"That's so sick, dude," Kyle says, moaning and pulling his pillow over his face. "How the hell did that _happen_?"

"I don't know," Stan says. "I try not to think about it."

"Me, too," Kyle says, though it's become a kind of morbid obsession of his, what those two do to each other and whether or not they have conversations about it. In public, Cartman still gives Butters hell like he does with everyone else, but he's discreetly protective of him, too. Back in February, some eighth grader slammed Butters' locker door shut while his hand was still inside it, breaking two of his fingers. Coincidentally, that kid's house burned down the following weekend. It smacked of Cartman's previous arsons, though the police apparently didn't make the connection, and Stan talked Kyle out of pointing this out to them.

"You have to admit he's kind of mellowed, though," Stan says. "So maybe it's worth the disturbing mental images. Not that I think about it," he added quickly.

"Oh, hell no," Kyle says. He's wondered if Cartman and Butters do everything _but_ kiss, as if they're some kind of evil inverse of him and Stan.

"Let's stop talking about this," Stan says after an awkward pause.

"Please, yeah," Kyle says, nodding.

They have breakfast, dress, and go over to Kyle's house so he can practice his Torah reading. It's a long passage chosen by his mother, because she wants to show him off to the congregation. Kyle feels like his pronunciation isn't actually that good, and Stan insists that he's being too hard on himself, as if Stan knows what Hebrew should sound like. Even reading over the passage in his head makes Kyle feel like a dumb pretender, and practicing it out loud is like tripping over his own tongue.

"What's it about?" Stan asks when they're sitting on Kyle's bed, propped against pillows while Kyle glumly contemplates the text.

"Jacob and Esau," Kyle says. Stan stares at him blankly, and Kyle laughs. "It's the same as the first part of your Bible, dude. Genesis. It's just in Hebrew."

"Oh, right. Which story is it, though?"

"When Jacob wrestles with the angel."

"Cool." Stan leans a little closer; he's pressed against Kyle, which isn't unusual, but Kyle doesn't know exactly what's allowed between them anymore, if he should press back or lean away. "How come your mom picked that part?" Stan asks.

"I don't know. I guess she likes the idea that I'd win if I had to fight an angel. Or something."

"So go ahead," Stan says. "I want to hear this. The Jewish version."

"Ah, God, this whole thing is so humiliating!" Kyle says, imagining himself in his full bar mitzvah garb, trying to read this without letting his voice crack and while attempting to ignore Cartman's snickering.

"Why?" Stan asks.

"I don't know, it just is."

"Not when it's just in front of me, though," Stan says. "I mean, why don't you read it now, however many times you want to, and then when you're up there in front of everyone you can pretend it's still you and me in your room."

"Fine," Kyle says. He sits up a little straighter, and Stan stays slumped at his side, his forehead resting against Kyle's shoulder. "Ready?" Kyle says. He feels stupid, but also cozy, safe.

"Ready," Stan says.

Kyle reads, stumbling a little at first, but once he's gotten into the thick of it he's able to calm down, reminding himself that it's just Stan, and Stan won't laugh. Stan won't even know if Kyle screws up, which is the magical part about Stan, because he doesn't see Kyle's screw ups for what they are, not the way that other people do, even though Kyle is a language that Stan speaks fluently. He's just a kinder translator than most people.

When he's finished, Kyle feels better, because he could tell Stan was actually paying attention, even if he didn't know the words. Kyle looks over at Stan and smiles, his face falling when he sees Stan's expression.

"What's wrong?" Kyle asks, and he's barely gotten the second word out before he's being pushed down onto his pillow and kissed, as if what he just said was Hebrew for, _I_ _want_ _you_ _on_ _me_, _Stan_ _Marsh_, _right_ _now_. Kyle parts his lips in surprise, and leaves them open for the tip of Stan's tongue when he pushes it between them, timidly searching for Kyle's. Kyle doesn't know what to do, just keeps his eyes shut and licks at Stan blindly, probably too wetly, the Torah passage crinkling between them as Stan crawls on top of him.

"Oh, fuck," Stan says, panting this against Kyle's mouth. "Kyle."

"Yeah?" His heart is slamming and he's frozen under Stan, tense as bone, but he's experiencing an odd sort of calm at the same time, as if his mind is in the eye of the storm that's ripping through his body.

"Your speech," Stan says. He looks like he'll cry. "Ah - I wrinkled it."

"It's just a print out," Kyle says. "It's not a fucking - holy relic. Stan, Jesus, what are you doing?"

"I'm sorry," Stan says. He tries to move off but Kyle holds him in place. "It's not Wednesday."

"Fuck Wednesday!" Kyle groans and sits up on his elbows, pressing his forehead to Stan's. "I want to do it every day, all the time. Don't you?"

"Yes," Stan says, sobbing the word out, nodding. "So much, fuck, _Kyle_."

"Wait!" Kyle says when Stan tries to kiss him again. "What about - I thought you weren't gay?"

"I thought that, too," Stan says. He sits back, straddling Kyle's hips. "I didn't feel gay. I just felt - affectionate."

"Affectionate?" It suddenly seems like the most moronically absurd word in the English language. "Jesus. Well. Now what do you feel like?"

"Pretty fucking gay," Stan says, and he grins when Kyle laughs.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me?" Kyle asks. He puts his arms out and Stan leans down into them, moaning.

"I don't know," Stan says. "You scare the shit out of me."

"_Me_?"

"Yeah," Stan says. He cups Kyle's cheek, stroking the softest part with his thumb. "You're everything. Kyle, I-"

"What?"

"You know that day you almost died?"

"Yes," Kyle says, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

"You know I'm obsessed with it and shit?"

"Yeah, I've noticed." He rubs Stan's sides, trying to convince him, like he has for the past three years, that he's okay now.

"I think we went somewhere that day," Stan says, whispering this. "Some place we're probably never going to remember. I think that's why Kenny went into the water and not me. He had to save both of us, I think. 'Cause, I." He takes a deep breath and bumps his nose against Kyle's. "Don't laugh, okay?"

"I won't," Kyle says. "I promise."

"I think I went to some kind of purgatory and got you back," Stan says. "I know it makes me sound insane, and I'm sorry. I'm just always going to think that, for the rest of my life. Something happened to us, dude. We were almost, like, separated. But I found you and brought you back, I swear to God, Kyle, I think I did."

Kyle stares up at him for a while, glad that he has no desire to laugh. He can see that Stan is terrified that he will, or, worse, that he'll cry and tell Stan he's lost his mind. Kyle lets out his breath and sneaks his hands up under Stan's shirt, finding Stan's skin with his fingertips. Stan was in the water with him, and he was dry on land when Kenny brought him up. Kyle has always sort of known that both are true, and he doesn't think he'll ever know how.

"How do you know it wasn't me?" Kyle asks. "Maybe I found you."

Stan smiles and kisses his lips, just softly, his eyes still open. Kyle kisses him back until his eyes slide shut, and Kyle closes his, too, sneaking his tongue out to meet Stan's as Stan's weight drops down onto him, the passage about Jacob and the angel still pressed between them. Kyle thought that if they ever did snap and grab each other, it would be frenzied, unstoppable, sort of frightening. It's actually slow and calm, maybe because they're both savoring it, or maybe because, again, it doesn't feel like the first time they've done this. Kyle likes the idea that if they slipped out of time somehow, if Stan fought some secret battle against Death itself to get him back, maybe over many eons in some other universe, they also took some time to do this. Maybe it kept them human, helped them find their way back, or maybe they just couldn't resist, even as bodiless spirits or manifestations of energy or whatever the fuck. Kyle can't imagine any universe where he wouldn't want this from Stan, all the time.

"I'm gonna be so addicted to this," Stan says after they've kissed for something like an hour and Kyle is feeling a bit outside of time again, his lips throbbing from overuse and his legs tangled up with Stan's. They're still lying in Kyle's bed, their heads on his pillow and their hands up under each other's shirts. Neither of them has yet had the nerve to reach for a nipple, but Kyle is thinking about it, and he feels like Stan must be, too.

"There are worse things to be addicted to," Kyle says. He can't stop smiling like an idiot, and his cheek muscles are as overworked as his lips. Stan, meanwhile, seems very serious, petting Kyle and looking quite grave at moments.

"You don't even know, though," Stan says. "I'm going to drive you crazy. That's why I wanted to keep the rule about Wednesdays. If you seriously tell me I can do this whenever I want-"

"You seriously can. I want you to, Stan, fuck!"

"Kyle," Stan says, and Kyle has to hold in laughter, because Stan looks like he's about to pledge his love through song or something. Stan rubs his face against Kyle's and closes his eyes. "You are so _perfect_," Stan says, whispering, and Kyle can't hold in his laughter any longer.

"No, I'm not," he says, feeling only a little guilty. He would have expected Stan to get like this over the first girl he really fell for, but it seems fairly ridiculous to have it directed at him, considering that Stan knows the extensive details of Kyle's history with hemorrhoids, among other things.

"Yeah, you are," Stan says, petting his face. "Trust me. You are."

Kyle convinces his mother to let Stan sleep over, arguing that it will help him be less nervous about his bar mitzvah in the morning, which is true. The fact that Kyle's parents continue to assume that Stan is too butch to return his feelings means that sleepovers are still viewed as innocuous. They worm together under Kyle's blankets and whisper to each other for a long time in the dark, mostly about God and angels and other stuff having to do with religion, which is probably why Kyle dreams about Stan getting confirmed in the Catholic church. Stan isn't nervous in Kyle's dream, he's excited, being congratulated by nuns and drinking fruit punch in a reception room at a plain-looking church that isn't the one Stan attends in South Park. Toward the end of the dream, Stan sits alone in a chair near the refreshment table, taking tiny bites from a cookie. Kyle tries to go to him so he won't be by himself, but Kyle isn't really in the room, and Stan goes on sitting there alone, until the cookie is gone and he's brushing the crumbs off his slacks.

Kyle is upset when he wakes up, as startled as he's ever been by any thunderstorm, because something about the dream felt solid in a dangerous way. He scoots over to Stan and spoons up behind him, squeezing him. Stan sighs in his sleep and Kyle kisses his neck, then licks it, just a little.

"I'm here," Kyle whispers, as if Stan has shouted for him from some other room.

"Where were you?" Stan asks, and Kyle opens his eyes, surprised.

"I've been here the whole time," Kyle says, though it doesn't feel true. Stan turns over sort of irritably and pulls Kyle against his chest, holding him there, his hand sliding up to cup the back of Kyle's head.

"I looked for you every time I rolled over in bed," Stan says, mumbling this into Kyle's hair. "Every time."

Kyle wants to say something comforting in response, but he only manages to moan sympathetically and slide his hand up under the back of Stan's t-shirt, snugging his arm along the curve of Stan's spine. This seems to work; Stan goes soft in his arms, and soon they're both asleep again.

The bar mitzvah reading goes fine, mostly because Kyle reminds himself, shaking badly on his way up to the podium, that Stan said he was perfect and seemed to really believe it. The party afterward is actually kind of fun, though Kyle has to endure a lot of cheek-pinching attention from relatives he hasn't seen since he was a toddler. Most of them hand him envelopes full of money after abusing his cheeks, so it's a fair trade. Kenny says he has to give Kyle his present later, in private, which is worrying. Stan's present is two tickets to Funland, formerly Cartmanland, and he whispers to Kyle that he has something for him later, too. Kyle ends up dancing with Bebe, though he doesn't really want to and has to fidget backward when her hands start to travel below his belt.

"So you're a man now," she says to Kyle, looking as if she's doubtful about this.

"Yeah," he says. "Sort of."

"You're cute," she says, pulling at some of the curls at the back of his neck. "You and Stan are like, the cutest ones at school. It's so unfair."

"Huh?"

"Well, other than Kenny, but of course he's taken, too." Bebe looks over at Wendy and Kenny, who are dancing nearby. Kenny is whispering something in Wendy's ear, making her giggle. "You know, your little brother tried to hit on me," Bebe says, turning back to Kyle.

"Ike?" Kyle sputters. "He's seven!"

"Yeah. He said he likes older women." She kisses Kyle's cheek without warning, but it isn't very different from how his aunt Marva kissed him ten minutes ago. "You should dance with Stan," she says.

"What?" Kyle goes red, looking over his shoulders to make sure no one heard. "No! That's-"

"Maybe not now, but someday." Bebe is backing away, smiling sadly. "Happy birthday, anyway. I'm gonna get some cake."

She leaves Kyle speechless in the middle of the dance floor, and when someone takes his elbow he jumps. It's Butters, and Cartman is with him, eating from a plate loaded with chicken wings and cheese cubes.

"Happy birthday, Kyle!" Butters says. "You're a man now, buddy!"

"I wish everybody would stop saying that," Kyle says. Cartman cackles, wiping fried chicken grease from his chin.

"Seriously you guys," he says. "Like Kyle will ever be a man."

"Oh, Eric, hush up," Butters says. He helps himself to a cheese cube from Cartman's plate, and Cartman glares at him but doesn't try to snatch it back. "This band is pretty good," Butters says, swaying in place. "Kind of makes me wish I hadn't vowed never to dance again."

"Thank God for that," Cartman says. "Fuck you guys, anyway, I'm gonna get more cheese. Just so I can put it on the same plate as my meat," he says to Kyle, smirking, as if Kyle cares. The more he thinks about it, the more it starts to irritate him, but Stan appears at his side to distract him.

"Come to Kenny's house after the party, okay?" Stan says. "We're both gonna give you our real presents there."

"You're starting to make me nervous," Kyle says.

"Don't be," Stan says. He's smiling at Kyle like he wants to kiss him, getting that heavy-lidded look.

"Want to go to the bathroom?" Kyle blurts, glancing at Butters, who is still hovering, smiling stupidly.

"Sure," Stan says.

"Can I come?" Butters asks.

"No!" Kyle says. "Jesus, Butters, why would you want to come to the bathroom with us?"

"I didn't mean to the bathroom, silly!" Butters says. "I meant to Kenny's house, after."

"Only if you don't bring Cartman," Kyle says.

"But Eric and me do everything together," Butters says, his face falling.

"Just let them come," Stan says. "It might actually be even more fun if they do."

"What?" Kyle says. He glances at Butters. "Um, no offense, Butters, but – _why_?"

"You'll see," Stan says, grinning, and he pulls Kyle off the dance floor by the sleeve.

Kyle doesn't actually get to kiss Stan in the bathroom or anywhere else during the party. Every corner is crowded with people who want to congratulate him, and after cake he has to take a thousand pictures with his family. He's tired by the time it's all done, and even as he's begging his mother to be allowed to go to Kenny's house he's sort of wishing he could just go home and get spooned by Stan until he falls asleep.

They walk to Kenny's house in a noisy group of six, and when Kenny holds Wendy's hand, Stan reaches over to hold Kyle's. It makes Kyle feel jumpy and exposed, but he holds on tight, not wanting Stan to think that he doesn't appreciate the gesture. Kyle waits for Cartman to say something, or - worse, maybe - to hold Butters' hand like this is a game they're all playing, some sort of dare, but Cartman just continues to rant about Kyle's cousin Kyle, who was in attendance and apparently had the nerve to try to speak to Cartman at the party.

"Kyle, that shit is in your _genes_," Cartman says. "How can you sleep at night, knowing that - that _creature_ is a _part_ _of_ _you_?"

"I don't know," Kyle says. "Maybe you can relate, since you come from a long line of gingers."

"At least I don't have both!" Cartman says. "It's like - Kyle's genetic makeup, the worst of both worlds! You're lucky you can't get him pregnant, Stan."

"Cartman, shut up, or we won't let you hang out with us," Kenny says.

"Also, I might kick your ass," Stan says, turning to glower at him.

"C'mon, Eric, be nice," Butters says. "It's Kyle's birthday."

"Just what is this present you're giving him, anyway?" Wendy asks Kenny.

"He hasn't told you?" Stan says.

"It's a surprise for everyone," Kenny says.

"Stan knows!" Wendy says.

"Yeah, well, I had to get his approval. No one should shop for Kyle without consulting Stan."

Kenny's present for Kyle is a bag of weed and rolling papers, and Stan's secondary present is a little photo album with pictures of them as kids, which apparently Kenny and Wendy both helped him make. Kyle is annoyed by the weed but charmed by the photo album, and he looks through the pictures with Butters and Wendy while the other three get high. Stan all but begs Kyle to try it, and Kyle gives in only because Cartman is able to convince Butters to smoke, and Kyle is not about to be the only boy who isn't doing it. He already feels weird and loopy from breathing in the smoke that the others have filled Kenny's small room with, and he's pretty gone after the first lungful that he actually manages to hold in.

"You guys look so stupid right now," Wendy says, but she's smiling a little, sitting on Kenny's bed and watching them as they progressively get higher. Butters is the giggliest, predictably, and he's draped himself onto Cartman's back. Kyle is stunned that Cartman is allowing it, though Cartman seems pretty out of it. He keeps talking about the cake-sized Pop Tart that Butters made him for his birthday last year, and how he wants one again this year.

"What flavor?" Butters asks, sort of drooling this question into Cartman's ear.

"Uh, S'mores," Cartman says, frowning as if this is a very serious decision. "And, hey, fuck my birthday. Go make me one right now, Butters, chop chop."

"I can't, Eric, I'm too sleepy!"

Stan laughs, his chest bouncing against Kyle's back. Kyle is sitting between Stan's legs, trying to decide if he feels good or sick to his stomach. He's starting to feel nervous, like they're doing something that could get them in trouble not just with their parents but _cosmically_, and he hides his face against Stan's neck, worrying that he's going to float out of his body and into some other Kyle in an alternate dimension that's not as good as this one. Stan wraps his arms around him, which helps.

"You guys," Wendy says, looking at Stan and Kyle and bringing a hand to her chest. "We should take a picture of you like this," she says.

"No, we shouldn't," Stan says, the joint wagging between his lips. He offers it to Kyle, and passes it to Kenny when Kyle shakes his head.

"It's so smoky in here," Kyle says, pulling his knees up to his chest so Stan can hug them, too. "It's making me dizzy."

"We should go outside," Kenny says. "We should go to Stark's Pond!"

"No," Stan says. "Kyle hates it there."

"I do not." It's true; Stan has remade the place for him by kissing him there on a weekly basis. His memories of those Wednesdays after school have gotten stronger than the memory of the day he almost died.

"We should go to Kentucky Fried Chicken," Cartman says, his eyes glazing over as if he's amazed by his own brilliant idea.

"No one's going anywhere," Wendy says. "You guys are going to get in trouble!"

"Not if we just go to my backyard," Kenny says. He flops onto the bed beside her and puts his chin on her shoulder. "Are you mad at me?" he asks when she frowns at him.

"Yes," she says, but she lets him kiss her, with tongues, and Kyle is mesmerized by this for a moment, then grossed out. He stands up, shakily, and Stan does, too.

"Let's go," Kyle says, pulling Stan toward the door. "Before Cartman and Butters start making out, too."

"Ey, fuck you!" Cartman shouts. Butters is more or less asleep with his head on Cartman's shoulder, humming to himself dazedly.

"Hey, wait up!" Kenny says. "I'm coming, too."

Outside, the warmth of the spring-like afternoon has disappeared almost entirely, and Kyle is shivering by the time they reach the old swing set at the back of Kenny's yard. Stan takes his jacket off and drapes it around Kyle's shoulders before getting distracted by one of the many stray cats that constantly wander on and off the McCormick property. Wendy joins him in petting it and fretting about potential ear mites, and Kyle sits on one of the creaky old swings, Kenny leaning beside him and dragging on the last of the joint. Kyle feels better outside, but still worried, like these last hours of the day he became a man are his final chance to figure out certain things that took place in his childhood.

"Hey," he says, kicking Kenny's boot. "You remember, um. That day at Stark's Pond? When you saved me?"

"Oh, sure," Kenny says. "Vaguely." He smiles to let Kyle know he's joking.

"What happened?" Kyle asks, and he intended to clarify, but actually that question seems like enough. Kenny's smile fades, and he tosses the stubby remains of the joint down into the dirt.

"Nobody gets an instruction manual," Kenny says. "Least of all me. Hey, let me ask you something. If God were to give the son of the devil a guardian angel, do you think he'd pick his _worst_ angel for the job, or his best one?"

Kenny looks at Kyle as if he sincerely wants an answer for this. Kyle is drifting, barely aware of what they're talking about. His parents are totally going to know that he's high when he comes home. He's going to be grounded for the rest of the goddamn summer. He sighs and toes the dirt, swinging a little.

"I think he'd pick his best one," Kyle says, because he's just high enough to refocus on the question and feel that his answer is one hundred percent correct. "Because that would be a pretty hard job."

"Thanks for saying so," Kenny says. "And happy birthday, dude. Sorry my present was lame."

"It wasn't lame," Kyle says, because Kenny's gift wasn't the weed so much as the past hour or so they've all spent together, and it's been really good, in a way Kyle can't define with his head fuzzy like this, but really good all the same.

Back in Kenny's room, Cartman and Butters have both fallen asleep, Cartman with his back to Kenny's bed and Butters curled up in Cartman's lap. Cartman is still wearing his jacket and tie from the reception, and Butters is holding on to the end of Cartman's tie in such a leash-like fashion that Kyle can't resist taking a picture with his phone, though he's pretty sure he's not actually planning on using it for blackmail purposes.

Stan brings both Kyle and the stray cat home with him, which saves Kyle from being grounded indefinitely but causes a somewhat dramatic fight between Stan and his father, who objects to cats in general more than to a possibly diseased stray animal entering the house. Kyle can barely hold in nervous laughter as Stan argues in a semi-lucid fashion about why the cat should be allowed to stay. The whole thing becomes less funny when Stan loses the argument, is forced to turn the cat out into the night, and goes up to his bedroom sobbing about how unfair life is and how nobody cares about orphaned animals. That's the word he uses, 'orphaned,' which for some reason makes Kyle get a little emotional, too, and he lies in bed with Stan, holding him while he cries, both of them still in their party clothes. Stan is massively high, and Kyle can't believe his parents haven't caught on, though it isn't out of character for Stan to get emotional about imperiled animals.

"Stanley?" his mother says from the other side of the door when Stan's crying has quieted. He's still sniffling against Kyle's chest, and Kyle doesn't want to let him go, but also doesn't want Stan's father to throw him out into the night, too. Kyle sits up, leaving his hand pressed over Stan's ear.

"You can come in," Kyle calls.

"No, she can't," Stan says, but he just lies there wiping his face with his blankets when his mother slips into the room and closes the door behind her. She gives Kyle a weary smile.

"Honey," she says to Stan, sitting down on the bed and touching his hip. "Don't be so upset-"

"That cat is gonna die alone and Dad doesn't even care!" Stan says, and the melodrama of this statement almost makes Kyle start giggling again. He bites the end of his tongue and braces himself.

"If the cat is still in the backyard tomorrow morning, we can take it to an animal shelter together," Stan's mother says.

"But it's mine," Stan says, tears still pooling in the corners of his eyes, rolling down over his nose.

"No, it's not, honey."

"Well, it should be!"

"Dad is allergic, Stanley."

"He is not, he's just a dick!"

Sharon groans and looks up at Kyle, shaking her head. Kyle gives her a smile, hoping that he doesn't seem high and slightly confused.

"Did you have a good birthday, sweetheart?" Sharon asks, tugging on the left flap of Kyle's ushanka.

"Yeah, I did," Kyle says. "Totally - good. Very good."

For a moment he's terrified that she's spotted the weed in his eyes, or smelled it, but she just looks down at Stan and tucks some hair behind his ear.

"Don't make Kyle feel bad for you on his birthday," she says. "You're being very silly."

"No, I'm not," Stan says, muttering this into the blankets. He seems to be falling asleep. "Kyle understands."

Sharon rolls her eyes and smiles at Kyle, who doesn't understand much of anything at the moment, except that he wants to drop down to the mattress and sleep for two days straight.

"Don't you two go sleeping in your clothes," Sharon says, patting Stan's hip and standing. "Kyle, you can borrow some of Stan's pajamas." She sighs and leans down to kiss Stan's cheek. "Sweet dreams," she says. "And don't worry about that cat. He'll be fine, you'll see."

"She doesn't know that," Stan says after she's gone, mumbling. Kyle reaches over him to flip off the lamp on the bedside table. Stan has his eyes closed, and he gropes for Kyle as Kyle settles down beside him. They squirm together until Kyle's lips are on Stan's forehead, his arm hugged around Stan's shoulders.

"Dude, I feel so weird right now," Kyle says when he closes his eyes. "Like the room is moving." He hugs Stan more tightly, because he suddenly seems like the only solid thing in the world.

"Don't ever leave me," Stan says, mumbling this into the hollow of Kyle's throat.

"I won't," Kyle says.

"I mean it, dude."

"Me too!"

They sleep through the night without moving, and when Kyle wakes up he's left a drool spot on Stan's forehead. Kyle's head hurts, but it's not like a normal headache, it's more like his head has been removed, shaken vigorously, and replaced on his neck at a slightly off-kilter angle. It's still dim outside, but only because it's overcast. The clock beside Stan's bed says it's half past ten.

Kyle cleans his spit from Stan's forehead and scoots down to nuzzle at him, testing to see if he'll wake up. Stan sighs forcefully against Kyle's cheek and reaches up under his untucked shirt to give his side an admonishing squeeze. He's asking Kyle to be still, to go back to sleep. Kyle thinks he probably will, in a minute, but in the meantime he watches Stan as the tension drains from his fingers, his hand growing heavier on Kyle's side. Yesterday was Kyle's last day as a child, in the eyes of God if not the state of Colorado, and most of the mysteries of his childhood remain unsolved. It doesn't bother him, because there's only one that might have mattered: what he would be without Stan, if Stan hadn't always been here. Kyle is glad he'll never have to know. He kisses Stan over the bridge of his nose and wonders if that cat is still in the backyard. He can't imagine any lost, lonely, orphaned thing being found by Stan and not doing everything in its power to stay with him.

The cat stays, and not just until the morning. Stan's father won't budge on his no cats policy, but Kyle is able to talk his parents into adopting the cat as a bar mitzvah gift to him, playing up the fact that caring for the cat himself will be an important lesson in responsibility, an advance into actual manhood. Stan and Kyle pool their money to pay for the cat's shots, ear mite medication, and spaying, and they name her Ginger, because she's orange and because it will irritate Cartman.

Over the years, Ginger is an indifferent witness to a variety of adventures that take place in Kyle's bedroom. They go through a period of shutting her out of the room during their after school activities, but eventually decide that it's too conspicuous and simply pull the blankets up over themselves to protect her innocent eyes. So Stan takes Kyle's virginity inside a kind of blanket fort, including the blankets that Kenny brought to Stark's Pond seven years ago, which Stan doesn't seem to recognize. Kyle considers mentioning the blankets' origin when they're lying together afterward, panting and kissing and laughing against each other's lips, but ultimately he decides not to. He's afraid that if they talked about it now, as grown-ups - officially, Kyle thinks, because they're no longer virgins - Stan would laugh off his old theory about wrestling Kyle's soul out of purgatory. Kyle wants to go on thinking that Stan believes that, so he just tucks one of the old blankets around Stan's shoulder and kisses his face.

"Are you okay?" Stan whispers, pulling Kyle down under the blanket with him.

"Yeah," Kyle says. He can hear someone walking around downstairs, probably his mother, and he clings to Stan, afraid that she heard the bed knocking against the wall. She knows now, like everyone in town who has any reason to know they exist, that Stan is Kyle's boyfriend, but he's pretty sure she doesn't think they're having sex, and he really doesn't want to be sat down and lectured about about how anal pleasure is perfectly natural. "Was I too loud?" he asks.

"I don't think so," Stan says. He turns to look at Ginger, who is curled up in her cat bed near Kyle's bookshelf, asleep. "She doesn't seem bothered."

"Like that means anything. Stan, _mph_." Kyle arches up to kiss him, deeply, tasting the lingering flavor of his come on Stan's tongue. "That was so good," he whispers when he pulls back, grinning.

"Yeah?" Stan smiles. He'd been worried about hurting Kyle, even after years of regular finger-banging.

"Yeah. It felt like this thing that I'd missed, you know? Even though I'd never had it." Physically, it was definitely the first time Kyle had anything near the size of Stan's cock inside him; they went incredibly slowly, and it still burned like hell at first. But the larger feeling, the _Stan_-_is_-_inside_-_me_ feeling, wasn't as overwhelming as he'd feared. It was strangely comforting, the thought that they'd somehow done this before, maybe in mutual dreams.

That evening, Kyle's mother gives no indication that she heard Stan claiming her eldest son's innocence earlier in the day. Stan has dinner with Kyle's family, and they talk about college applications, and the fact that Ike is already a high school freshman at ten years old, something Kyle feels only marginally jealous about at the moment. Ginger winds between Kyle's ankles under the table, mewling at Stan, who has been known to give her table scraps when he thinks Kyle won't notice. Kyle shifts in his seat and smiles to himself, pleased with his secret soreness, the step he took toward manhood that only Stan knows about. Cartman would say that what they did this afternoon makes Kyle the exact opposite of a man, but Kyle stopped giving a fuck about Cartman's opinions years ago. Cartman calls Butters his girl and brags about how hot Butters looks in a dress. He's not exactly at the forefront of sexual progressiveness, but Kyle is actually kind of impressed that Cartman has even come as far as he has. Stan claims it's only because he knows Stan and Kyle can't make fun of him for it, that their acceptance means more to Cartman than anything, but Kyle thinks he's wrong. Cartman would be having his way with Butters with or without their approval. The fact that Stan holds Kyle's hand at the movies surely doesn't make any difference.

It's still light out after dinner, and they walk to Stark's Pond, the sky burning with the sunset by the time they arrive, orange and pink, almost red in places. Stan takes Kyle's hand once they're far enough from the main road not to be spotted. Everyone who knows them is more or less okay with what they are, but some people who don't aren't. When they were sophomores some seniors cornered Kyle in the boys' bathroom at school and asked him if he'd rather suck their dicks or have his ass kicked, and he's not sure if they were serious or just trying to make him cry, but Token came in and chased them off before Kyle could find out. Kyle pretended not to remember the details of their faces, not wanting to make the whole thing into _some_ _big_ _deal_, mostly because Stan wanted blood, and not euphemistically. Kyle was nervous that year at school, jumpy and distracted, and he still won't go into public restrooms alone. He feels better now, maybe just for the idea that those guys have left town, but he knows there are other guys like that who are still here.

They go to the clearing without needing to discuss it. They haven't been in awhile, though it's summer and they've got nothing but free time until Stan's football practices start in August. When school starts again they'll be seniors, and, thinking this, Kyle remembers some dumb thing Cartman said when they were kids, looking forward to eighth grade. Something about ruling the school.

"So how are you feeling?" Stan asks when he sits with his back to their tree, a big one at the front of the clearing with their initials carved into the side of the trunk that faces away from the pond.

"I'm good," Kyle says as he settles between Stan's legs, pulling Stan's arms around him. "Do you feel different?" Kyle asks, tipping his head back onto Stan's shoulder.

"No," Stan says. "Except, that I don't have to worry about being horrible at it anymore. You're okay, though, really? You're not sore?"

"A little," Kyle says. "It's good, though. Makes me think of how big your dick is," he says, nipping at Stan's neck. Stan snorts, but Kyle can tell he's feeling proud of himself.

"Don't make me hard," Stan says.

"How come? What if we had sex here?"

"Nah, it'd be too weird."

"You think?" Kyle says, laughing, because Stan actually thought he was serious.

"We were innocent here," Stan says. "I used to have to count backward from ten to calm myself down. I was so afraid I'd just - grab you."

"I would lie in bed at night despairing about how you never grabbed me," Kyle says.

"Dude, what? That makes me feel terrible."

"Don't feel terrible! It's part of, like. The magic."

"The magic?" Stan says, and then they're both laughing, Stan pushing his hands up under Kyle's shirt, making him squirm. They kiss until it starts to get dark for real. The clearing gets a little scary at night, and they hurry away from it, holding hands, both of them looking back as they leave. They know now that there won't ever be anything there, no sign or clue or vivid memory, but it still feels good to look back, maybe just so they can laugh at each other and hurry away, mutually gloating over the fact that they can leave the place behind once it's gone dark.

Wednesdays never lose their charm, not even in college, when they have each other five times a day if they can. It's always best on Wednesdays, even the kissing, like some part of them has been waiting all week long.


	23. Chapter 23

A/N: Another long chapter - and I think this one took me the longest amount of time to write, for reasons that will probably be obvious. Thanks everyone for reading and for reviewing ~ only one more chapter after this! (+ epilogue) When I started writing this during the summer I joked to my friend that I'd probably still be working on it at Christmastime, and now here we are.

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><p>Kenny has the uncanny feeling, as he's flying through the air, that the car that hit him is the same one that killed Mr. Tweak the day Kenny slashed the tires on the Tweaks' car in a pathetic attempt to save them. He did at least save Mrs. Tweak, who stayed home to deal with the car repairs while her husband walked to work. Kenny has been killed by moving vehicles countless times, and he knows even before he hits the pavement that this one will at least be quick: head first, skull cracked, neck snapped, done. Mr. Tweak's death was similar, and Kenny had tried to take some comfort in that, though ultimately he still felt like he'd failed.<p>

He comes to in hell, feeling murderous, because if that really was the same car, this is apparently what he gets for trying to do a good deed. He hasn't died in almost three years, and the last time he did it almost ruined his marriage, because he came back after a week with no explanation for where he'd been. He had to make up a story about going on a bender with Kevin, and Wendy threw him out of the house. He went to rehab, which was ridiculously inane the second time around, almost enough to make him want to start using again for real, and after a month of that bullshit he was able to beg his way back into the house with a lot of crying about his family and how they'd fucked him up, which isn't even true anymore. He hates lying to her, and he's cursing to himself and kicking rocks as he walks through hell, trying to figure out what he's going to say this time.

He ends up at the Big House, because Christophe put the idea that Kenny might be Damien's guardian angel into his head years ago, and sometimes, when he really needs a fucking explanation for why this happens to him, it actually helps to believe that he's got a purpose here, even if Damien is an ungrateful bastard on his best days. Kenny isn't really in the mood for him or Pip, but Christophe has been hanging around them ever since they were promised a soul on a probationary basis, and Kenny likes Christophe. He checks his coat pocket and smiles when he feels an old pack of cigarettes crushed there. He always keeps some on him. It drives Wendy crazy, and he tells her that he wants to have some on hand in case of impending doom, so that he could have one last smoke, knowing that it won't be what kills him. There's some kind of truth wrapped up in that.

He rings the heavy bell at the front door of the Big House and waits. When the door opens, he expects a disinterested demonic servant, or maybe Christophe, who is usually the only one who is happy to see him. Instead, it's Pip, beaming and looking nearly thirty himself, presumably to match Damien. Pip seems happier than he ever did on earth, definitely happier than he's ever been to see Kenny, and after the initial shock, Kenny can see why: Pip is wearing a baby sling, his arms wrapped around the infant that's sleeping inside it.

"I guess your probationary period ended," Kenny says, not sure how he feels about this. Technically, this baby is related to him. Maybe not by blood this time around, but the fact remains that Damien and Karen created this particular soul, once.

"It did," Pip says, smiling and pulling Kenny closer. "Eight months, ten days, and – oh, I lost track of how many hours, but I used to know! Look at her, isn't she perfect?"

"A girl," Kenny says, peering at the baby, who is sleeping. She looks like a normal human baby, with a tuft of thin black hair and a fat little nose.

"Her name is Emma," Pip says, stroking her cheek with one finger. "And she's such a sweet baby, it's really a top-notch soul we were given for her, we've been so blessed!"

"Mhmm." Kenny looks up when he hears a footfall, hoping it will be Christophe. It is, but Damien is close behind him, limping and looking like he's in a terrible mood, as usual.

"Well, well," Christophe says, smiling. "It's been a long time, I think? Hard to say from our perspective, of course. Have you brought anything with you?" he asks before Kenny can tell him that it's been three years.

"Here you go," Kenny says, fishing out the cigarettes. Damien surges forward and snatches them before Christophe can.

"It's the least you can do, McCormick," he says, sticking one in his mouth.

"Don't you dare smoke that in here!" Pip says, and Emma wakes, whining. Pip shushes her, stroking her cheek. "Don't worry, darling," he says. "I won't let Daddy give you lung cancer, no, I won't."

"Christ," Damien says. "She's got demon blood, she can't get cancer."

"We'll go outside," Christophe says, grabbing the cigarettes from Damien and taking one for himself. "I could use some air, anyway."

"I'll just have some lunch done up, then," Pip says, brightening again. He walks to Damien and kisses his cheek. "What would you like, darling?"

"Something with bacon," Damien says. "And garlic."

"Bacon and garlic?" Pip says, to Emma, bouncing her a little. "Well, alright. We'll think of something, won't we? How's your leg?" he asks, speaking to Damien again.

"The same," Damien says, muttering.

"Poor Daddy!" Pip says, and Damien rolls his eyes.

"Maybe a smoke will help," Christophe says, inching toward the door. "Gentlemen? Eh?"

"We're coming," Kenny says, taking Damien by the elbow. "Congratulations," he says as they walk. "Daddy."

"I thought we were rid of you for good," Damien says, glowering at him. Kenny grins. The only pleasure he can take in hell, other than seeing Christophe, is giving Damien a hard time. It makes him think he's probably not actually the guy's guardian anything, but he does rib him with a kind of fondness that he can't explain.

"What happened to your leg?" Kenny asks Damien when the three of them are outside on the massive front steps, holding their cigarettes to the fireball in Damien's palm.

"Emma," Damien says.

"She hurt your leg?"

"No. She was my leg. Part of it, anyway." Damien drags on his cigarette and stares at Kenny as if that explains it.

"Huh?"

"The baby had to be torn from the thigh of her father," Christophe says. "It's part of the spell, how they got a body worthy enough for this soul to inhabit. There's more, if you want to hear about it."

"I don't know, do I?" Kenny says, making a face.

"It involves Pip's seed," Christophe says.

"Then enough said." Kenny turns to Damien. "Hey, let me see."

"Let you see what?" Damien asks, scowling.

"The wound. Is it just, like – a big chunk of missing flesh?"

"None of your business," Damien says, and he leans away from Kenny. "Anyway, the child is clearly perfect, so it was worth it. Have you managed to spawn anything up top?" Damien asks, smirking as if he knows Kenny will say no. Wendy went off birth control three years ago, but they haven't had any luck yet. Kenny shakes his head.

"How did you die?" Christophe asks, helpfully changing the subject.

"Car accident," Kenny says. "I was crossing the street during my lunch break, going to fucking Harbucks, and bam. I didn't even get my coffee."

"What a terrible inconvenience," Damien says.

"I know you think this is some sort of privilege," Kenny says, not in the mood for Damien's pouting, "But you're the one who's got the perfect set up. You won't lose anything when you die - all your stuff is already here. Meanwhile, my wife is up top wondering where the fuck I am, and when I get back, she's going to hate me for disappearing." Kenny looks down at his cigarette, trying not to show them how panicked he feels. "I don't know what I'll tell her this time," he says. "Last time I died, when I got back - it was bad."

"Women," Christophe says.

"As if you know anything about them," Damien says.

"You're an expert yourself, eh?"

"I've been known to successfully seduce them when necessary, yes."

"Anyway," Kenny says sharply, not wanting to talk about that. "I see the miracle of life hasn't inspired you two to actually become, like, friends?"

"I have no friends," Damien says. "I have servants and an heir. This creature is allowed to live in my home because he purports to function as a kind of liaison to God, which I suspect is a lie, but he's harmless, anyway, now that his wings are gone."

"You had wings?" Kenny asks Christophe, ignoring the rest of that.

"Yes, two big pains in my ass that appeared when I was dragged down here," Christophe says. "Lucky for me, they turned into one big pile of feathers after I conspired with a demon."

"I think I had some, once," Kenny says, frowning. "I wonder why mine fell off?"

"Maybe it happened when you started selling yourself for crack," Damien suggests.

"You're awfully sanctimonious for someone whose super power is basically a date rape drug," Kenny says. Damien rolls his eyes.

"I never did anything against your sister's will," he says. "She was always _up_ _for_ _it_, if you understand my meaning."

"How is Karen doing?" Christophe asks, putting his hand on Kenny's thigh when he starts to rise; they both know he can't win a fight with Damien, not down here and probably not up on earth, either, but it doesn't stop him from occasionally throwing punches, usually after being baited like this. Damien is grinning, dragging on his cigarette.

"You should be careful about how you treat people now that you've got your daughter to look out for," Kenny says, taking his seat again. "Somebody did you a pretty big favor. You could show some fucking gratitude."

"By my last accounting, I did you and your little friends in South Park a pretty big favor," Damien says. "You could show some fucking gratitude yourself."

"Hey, so, Karen?" Christophe says, rather loudly. "She is doing good now, yeah?"

"She's great," Kenny says, snapping this in Damien's direction. "Now that she's not being used as a baby mill, her life is going pretty well."

"She went to school?" Christophe says. "Last time you were here-"

"Yeah, she was still in college. Now she's way over on the east coast, in Vermont, working on this farm, you know, with chickens."

"Chickens?" Damien says.

"Yeah, she's a research scientist," Kenny says. "Poultry reproduction or something, I don't know, she has to explain it to me every time I see her. Which is not often." Karen escaped South Park with Kenny's help, went to a good school in California and went on to get her PhD. Kenny's mother has a lot of opinions about someone getting all that schooling just so they can trouble themselves with the egg-laying habits of domesticated fowl, but Kenny knows she's proud of Karen, mostly. Kenny is, too, and he wishes she would call their mother more often, even though he understands why she doesn't.

"Good for her, anyway," Christophe says when Kenny gives Damien a long look, daring him to say something more about his sister. "And you, you still work at that library?"

"Yeah," Kenny says. Back in high school, he and Wendy formed the South Park Teen Literacy Committee – Wendy's idea – to lobby the city for funds to expand the small community library, and they ended up getting it done with a private donation from Token's parents. Kenny has an MLS and pretty much runs the place, with the help of Tweek, whose mother sold their struggling coffee company just before the economic crash, at Kenny's urging. He tries to help his friends with financial advice whenever it seems like they'll listen, and he still fixes their cars for them, no charge.

"McCormick the librarian," Damien says, smirking. "Well, it suits you more than hooking, anyway."

"Thank you," Kenny says, sarcastically. "And how is being a stay at home dad suiting you?" he asks, hoping he sounds dismissive and not jealous, which is closer to the truth.

"Perfectly fine," Damien says. "Pip is persistently beside himself with joy, which can get a little grating, but his good moods have their benefits for me personally. And the baby, well." He drags on his cigarette, nodding to himself. "She looks like me, did you notice?"

"I saw she has black hair," Kenny says. "Do her eyes turn red when she's angry?"

"I haven't really deduced what her powers will be yet," Damien says thoughtfully, thumbing his bottom lip while the cigarette smolders between his fingers. "She's a singular crossbreed, as far as I know. A quarter demon, a quarter, well, ghost, and two halves human, I guess. It will be interesting, seeing her grow up." He looks wistful, almost smiling.

"Interesting," Christophe says. "And maybe very painful."

"Shut up about that," Damien snaps.

"What now?" Kenny says.

"This wound on his leg is getting worse as she gets bigger," Christophe says. Kenny expects Damien to offer some angry retort, but he's just staring off into the distance, scowling.

"Well, if you did die," Kenny says, "So what, right? You'd just end up in a fresh hell-bound body-"

"I don't think it's killing him, though," Christophe says, keeping his eyes on Damien when he speaks. "It's just, ah. Crippling this form, his half-mortal body."

"Fuck," Kenny says. "That sucks, dude."

"As if you care," Damien says. "I'm going in to eat. Give me the rest of those cigarettes."

Kenny does, and he watches as Damien stands with some difficulty, wincing and bracing himself against one of the stone pillars on the stairs. Kenny would offer to help if he wasn't sure that Damien would bark at him and tell him to get away. He stares openly as Damien limps into the house, leaving the massive front door open for them.

"He needs a cane," Kenny says.

"I'm afraid it will be much worse than that soon," Christophe says. "Once the little girl starts walking. He would kill himself, you know, to start over in a body that's stuck in hell, but he's afraid that would forfeit the spell and kill the baby, too. And I think he wants to take her to earth someday, and he can only do this if he's still, you know, alive. I don't know what sort of life he'll be living if the deterioration continues at this rate, though. He's worried," Christophe says. He drags on the last of his cigarette and throws it away.

"And you're not?" Kenny says. Christophe shrugs.

"Wings or no, the little girl is mine to look out for," he says. "She'll want her father, yeah? Not some shriveled thing that gave itself up so she could have a body of her own. I think I know how to fix this, though." He reaches over to clap his hand on Kenny's knee, giving it a shake. "I'm glad you came."

"Don't tell me you think I can help," Kenny says. Christophe smirks.

"I wasn't sure," he says. "It was a long shot, yes, but you asked to see the wound! That's a good sign, I think?"

"Don't look at me like that!" Kenny says. "I don't know what the fuck I could do for him. I don't have magical healing powers."

"Let me tell you a story," Christophe says. "It's about your friend Kyle, in his previous life. He was very sick all the time, ah, emotionally. Distressed. His parents would give him things to help, thinking this was, you know, chemical, but they were working without the information that he was mourning for the life he lost. Even if he couldn't remember it - his spirit was sick, yes? This is Damien's problem, too, I think. His spirit is suffering. He got what he wanted, but now he's living in terror. Maybe to you he seems to hide it well, and Pip is so distracted by the baby that he doesn't see it, either, but I see it."

"Living in terror of what?" Kenny asks.

"That this soul is not theirs to keep! That the baby will go to sleep and in the morning they will find a rock in the crib - this is what would happen to the ones without souls, before. I think he's wrong, but he has no faith. You could give that to him. That could heal him, I think."

"How am I supposed to give the son of Satan faith?" Kenny asks, exhausted by all of this. He keeps thinking of Wendy going through the motions up there on earth: the funeral, the reception, fishing out that black dress in the back of the closet that she doesn't remember buying, because she bought it the last time her husband died.

"It's easy to give someone faith," Christophe says. "You just lie to them."

"Huh?"

"This is how I helped Kyle. I would sit with him, stroke his forehead, and tell him that things would be okay. I would promise that his life would get better. Did I know these things were true? No! I hoped so, that's all, but they felt like lies I was telling to keep him alive. He needed me, my lies or my hope or whatever, and I think it saved him."

"You sound a lot more romantic than you did the last time I was here," Kenny says, not sure how he feels about this. Christophe shrugs.

"I have a purpose again. The little girl, Emma. I don't think she looks like him, really. She looks like Pip, who is a pain in my ass, but it's a miracle that a dead boy can have a real life in this place, isn't it? Something God gave him, but it's not just God's work. It's ours, too, yeah?"

"I don't know what you want me to do," Kenny says, standing. "Damien isn't going to show me his wound."

"He might if you told him a lie that could be true," Christophe says. "If you hope that it's true. But maybe you don't."

"What lie?" Kenny asks, increasingly uncomfortable.

"That you are his guardian and you can help him."

Kenny scoffs. "Okay. Sure. And what happens when I can't?"

"You don't know that you can't," Christophe says, standing. "Because you don't know that you aren't."

"This is just your personal crackpot theory," Kenny says, flushing, because he's wanted to believe it himself, sometimes. It's the stupidest sort of fantasy, that what he's been through makes him an _angel_ rather than an abomination, but he's given it some thought over the past twenty years of his rebooted life. For all of his efforts to make sure things go right this time for his friends and for Wendy, he doesn't feel angelic, and often doesn't even feel effective. He tried to encourage Cartman's mother to see a heart specialist in various ways throughout the years, but she still died a year after they finished high school.

"How is Kyle?" Christophe asks as they walk inside, following the sound of the baby's shrieking laughter. The Big House is candlelit and enormous with cold marble floors, and Kenny can't imagine growing up here, though he supposes it's no less unwelcoming than his own childhood home.

"Kyle is good," Kenny says. "Our friend Bebe is pregnant with his baby."

"Ah," Christophe says, and he frowns. "How did this happen?"

"Science," Kenny says. "Stan's sister donated the egg, Bebe is just the surrogate. She's married to Kyle's brother, did you know?"

"I don't get a newsletter," Christophe says. He seems subdued and tired, the bags under his eyes heavier than usual, and Kenny wonders if he and Damien actually have become friends somehow, like Kyle and Cartman have, in a way that they would never even consciously acknowledge to themselves. The Christophe that Kenny knew three years ago would have said any child Damien managed to create would be better off raised by wolves.

"Do you miss him?" Kenny asks. "Kyle, I mean?"

"I don't have enough of a sense of time to miss anything," Christophe says, a little sourly. "Anyway, he's better off without me. He's happy, yes?"

"Oh, yeah," Kenny says. "He's got his license now, and he's renting a little office in town."

"I wish I could go back and tell him this, as he was, when he was a teenager in that other life," Christophe says, smirking. "He would have laughed."

"I could never do his job," Kenny says. "He seems to find it really rewarding, though. He says that if any place in the world needs a good child psychologist, it's South Park."

"That is true, I suppose."

They arrive in the dining room, which is as massive as the rest of the house, with a long, very formal table stretching from one end of the room to the other. There's an ornate chair at one end that's big enough for Damien's father, and Pip looks hilariously petite in it, sitting with the baby in his lap and spooning some orange-hued mush from a crystal goblet and into Emma's laughing mouth. Damien is beside them in a lesser throne, sawing at a bacon-wrapped steak.

"You can't eat while you're dead, can you?" he says when Kenny sits down across from him.

"Nope," Kenny says. Part of the torture of hell is retaining a sense of smell, so he feels hungry when he catches a whiff of the garlic mashed potatoes and the greasy bacon, even though he doesn't need food.

"Too bad for you," Damien says, twisting a rubbery piece of bacon around his fork before dipping it into the potatoes.

"Do you hate watching him eat?" Kenny asks Pip, who is using Emma's bib to wipe her chin.

"Oh, I don't care," Pip says. "It's nice not to have to bother with food. Look at what a mess it all is, hmm?" he says, speaking to the baby, but she's staring at Kenny, wide-eyed and curious now that she's fully awake. He waves, and she continues to stare at him.

"She's not used to seeing strangers," Damien says. "I'm surprised she's not wailing."

"Emma knows Kenny is our friend, right?" Pip says, nuzzling at her until she's looking at him again, smiling.

"Speak for yourself," Damien says.

"You know what?" Kenny says, tired of this act. "If you resent me so much, I wish you'd just send me off to be tortured or something."

"You know my father has forbidden that," Damien says, chewing.

"Oh, stop it, you two," Pip says. He hugs Emma to him and cranes his neck to look at Christophe, who is standing near the huge window at the back of the dining room, gazing out over the courtyard gardens that are meant to look like earth. The light isn't quite right, tinted with the glow of lava. "Christophe," Pip calls. "Come over here and keep the peace."

"That's hardly my job," Christophe says. He keeps his back to them. Kenny feels like he's being judged for not attempting to lay hands on Damien's injuries. The idea is absurd, and, considering where he is right now, he doesn't relish the idea of embracing yet another level of absurdity.

"He's the one asking to be tortured," Damien says, nodding to Kenny.

"You know he doesn't mean it," Pip says. He wraps an arm around Emma and reaches over to touch Kenny's shoulder with his free hand. "We so like it when you're here," he says. "And I do mean _we_."

"Pip," Damien says, closing his eyes and gripping his steak knife in his fist.

"Tell us about South Park," Pip says. "Whatever became of old Cartman? That was all so _dreadful_, what happened when he was down there, though obviously it's worked out well for everyone." He kisses Emma's forehead. She's staring at Kenny again, cautiously fascinated.

"Cartman is still the Chief of Police," Kenny says. "Or I guess he's the Chief of Police - again." He shrugs. "Cartman is Cartman. He doesn't really change. Not even, you know, if the entire universe shifts around him."

"And Butters?" Pip says. "They're still - ah?"

"Yeah, they still defy description," Kenny says. "Butters was promoted from motorcycle cop to deputy when Cartman became Chief. I'm sure that was a complete coincidence. Cartman keeps him out of the line of fire, though. He only lets Butters do security at elementary school plays."

"Oh, elementary school," Pip says, hugging Emma more tightly. "We're still debating if we should send her up to earth for that. Damien always wanted that when he was a boy, but I loathed school on earth, I'm sure you remember."

"Yes," Kenny says, feeling guilty. "Children are cruel."

"Our daughter would be instructed to incinerate anyone who irritated her," Damien says.

"Hence my hesitation," Pip says, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, we don't know that she could incinerate anything. So far she's just a perfectly normal little baby. Aren't you?" He lifts her up to rub his nose against hers. "Aren't you, hmm?"

"Don't insult her with that word," Damien says, putting his utensils down. "She's hardly 'normal.' She's exceptional. Look at what we went through to get her. We restructured the mortal world. We moved heaven and earth. Literally. God only knows what the immensity of her powers will be when she's older. Actually, I doubt even He knows."

Emma watches Damien when he speaks, in a way that makes Kenny feel heavy and small at the same time. It's something just slightly bigger than jealousy, or deeper, a biological longing that can move him even when he has no actual biological form. It's something his soul wants. Emma holds her arms out toward Damien and whines.

"Do you want to go to Daddy?" Pip asks, though she's not going to respond and the answer is obvious as she strains against Pip's hold on her.

"Bring her here," Damien says, pushing his plate out of reach and scooting back from the table.

"She's so squirmy, though," Pip says. "You know she'll hurt your leg-"

"She will not, bring her here."

Pip does, and Damien puts her over his knee on his good leg while Pip unties and removes her food-splattered bib. She's actually not very squirmy once Damien is holding her. She's calm and quiet, no longer babbling like she was at Pip, and Kenny wonders if Emma and Damien are communicating with some kind of demonic telepathy. It's a distressing thought, though mostly Damien seems preoccupied with ordering Emma's thin hair while she peers up at him, blinking when his fingers graze her forehead.

"She'll be the first child raised down here if we don't bring her to earth," Damien says. "It's a strange thought, even to me."

"Weren't you raised here?" Kenny asks. If he was really some kind of guardian, he would know this.

"Not entirely," Damien says. "I was on earth for the first six years, until my mother died."

"Oh. Well, she's down here now, then? Has she met her granddaughter?"

"No, and she never will."

"She's in heaven," Pip says, carefully, and when Kenny looks at him his expression is a clear warning not to delve too deeply into this.

"She was Mormon," Damien says. "My father did that on purpose, so that he could have me for himself when she died."

"Oh." Kenny looks at Christophe, not sure how he should continue. Christophe turns just enough to meet Kenny's eyes, his hands clasped behind his back.

"How about some dessert?" Pip asks, so loudly that Kenny jumps.

"Sure," Kenny says, though he can't actually eat anything. "As long as it's not, like, candied pomegranate seeds."

"How funny!" Pip says, laughing anxiously. "No, but, darling, what would you like? Maybe some port? Ginger snaps?"

"Phillip," Damien says, giving him a look. "Don't fuss over me. It gives me a headache."

"I'll take some port," Kenny says. "The dead can still get drunk, right?"

"By my father's idiotic provision, yes," Damien says. "I'll have some, too."

"Alright, then," Pip says, lifting Emma out of Damien's arms. "Christophe, will you come give me a hand with her? I think she needs a change."

"I'm not here to change diapers, goddamn you!" Christophe says, but he's following Pip out of the room, probably just for the sake of leaving Kenny alone with Damien. "The last time I did this the kid was already toilet trained," Christophe says, and he makes a face. "Well, mostly. But nobody asked me to change the fucking bedsheets."

"If you won't change her, at least hold her while I pour the drinks," Pip says. "You know you're the only nanny we trust."

"Refer to me as a nanny again and I'll have you sent up to rot in fucking heaven."

"As if you could! And I'm only giving you a compliment."

Their voices disappear down the long hallway that leads toward the kitchen, and Kenny looks across the table at Damien.

"So," Kenny says, his knee jiggling under the table. Christophe will think he's an asshole if he doesn't at least try. "This thing with your leg."

"It's the reality most of us have to live with," Damien says. "The body deteriorates. You want something from it, you have to give something up. I know you can't relate."

"I'm aging," Kenny says. "In a fucked up way, yeah, but I'm not immune."

"Your physical form is still a kind of currency," Damien says. "Wrinkled or not. And you're supposed to be - what? Thirty?"

"Twenty-nine."

"You look younger than that. You'll have unnatural long life, I'd bet anything."

"Anything?" Kenny says. "Dude, you're a father now. You can't say you'd bet anything."

"It's a figure of speech," Damien says. He sniffs. "And you call me sanctimonious."

"Would you be willing to show me this wound of yours?" Kenny asks. "If this power I have is currency - I don't know. Sounds like you could use a loan."

"What are you suggesting?" Damien asks, snarling. "That you could heal me? That's rich. I'd relocate to heaven myself before I let you put your hands on me."

"Why?" Kenny asks, louder than he intended to. "Why do you hate me? Why can't you trust me, after everything we've been through?"

Damien recoils. "What exactly have _we_ been through, McCormick? Your random jaunts in hell? Your service as my father's relationship counselor?"

"I've forgiven you for what you did to my sister!" Kenny says, shouting now. He stands from the table, letting the chair skid back angrily over the marble floor. "And to my friends, and to me! I've suffered for your whims, and you treat me like I've taken something from you! What do I have that you don't? This _curse_? A wife on earth who's going to hate me when I can't tell her why I abandoned her for days, weeks, maybe months? You know what?" Kenny laughs darkly and turns from the table. "Fucking forget it. I don't think I want to heal you. I think you have something to learn about consequences."

"You're really not catching on to why I loathe you?" Damien asks, roaring this, still seated. "Even as you're telling me that I have something to learn about consequences? You are not God, McCormick! Whatever I've got to learn, it won't be taught to me by you. You did not turn back time, you only suggested that it should be done by those who actually have the power to do so, and yes, there are consequences, and to be lectured by you, someone who is designed to go permanently unscathed, even after everything he's done, is really fucking insulting!"

"Well, so I've insulted you," Kenny says, walking away. He's not going to explain, again, that there are consequences for him, too. At least Damien can explain the special circumstances of his existence without being forgotten. "I'll leave your house, then. Apologize to Pip for me. Tell Christophe to come and find me later. I'm sure he'll want to chew me out for not lying to you about being your guardian."

"Yes, go sit by the lake and pout," Damien says. "Pretend that you don't love the idea of being responsible for me, and being able to _fix_ me like you try to fix everything."

"You know, I think I actually could help you!" Kenny shouts, turning back, livid. "And you're stupid enough to reject me, like an eight-year-old boy, holding on to this fucked up idea that your father prefers me-"

"You are finished, McCormick!" Damien says, standing easily, and Kenny wonders how he managed that until he realizes Damien isn't standing at all, he's levitating, the plates that remain on the table clattering, the room beginning to shake. "Fuck my father's orders. You think you've suffered? You haven't even begun to suffer!"

"Come and get me," Kenny says, though he has no weapons, no plan, only an abundance of fury coursing through him like a pale fire. It feels powerful enough to counter the flames in Damien's eyes as he comes closer, hovering over the table, and Kenny braces himself, feeling the air in the room rushing toward him like a tsunami that's still gathering strength.

When they crash together, Kenny thinks, oddly, of his own father. He lives in Fairplay, in the mobile home of the woman he impregnated back during a brief stretch of employment at Wall-Mart. Kenny has never met her, or the half-brother who lives with them. He's wondered if his father was less of a fuck up the second time around, for that boy. Probably not, but it's bothered him, on occasion, to think that his father could be a better person now, as if Kenny and his siblings were a lesson learned.

Kenny can't be sure if they're fighting in midair or on the ground. He's never been in a fight like this before, and he hasn't even been in a real physical fight since he fought his brother in that previous life, two days out of rehab, when Kevin was giving Karen a hard time about buying a pair of shoes, sounding exactly like their old man when he'd berate them for running the heat, fifty dollars worth of booze on his breath. This fight doesn't feel like that one. It's surreal, maybe because it's happening outside of mortal time, and Kenny knows how to end it, but he lets it go on for as long as he can stand it, his blows landing in some not-physical dimension, Damien's angry growling always close to his ear. He grabs Damien's thigh and Damien screams, wrenching in his grip. Through the fabric of Damien's pants, Kenny can feel a fat, dirty bandage, and he can see what's beneath it even without being allowed to look: necrotic flesh, black and slimy, eating its way almost all the way down to the bone. It's the price Damien paid for his daughter, for Pip, for the things that satiate the human half of his soul. These things exist, like Damien does, in a world of consequences.

They crumple together in a heap and hit the marble hard, though not hard enough to knock either of them unconscious. There's a weary pause, Damien hissing and holding his leg, and Kenny lies there feeling like he does when he wakes up in his bed at his mother's house after coming back to life, as if he's been on his back for an impossible length of time, steadily getting bigger and more real, solidifying. Pip is upon them in a flurry of panic, and his hysterical words sound foreign, like they're being spoken not just in another language but by another species. Kenny feels the immensity of his unknowable self receding, and he blinks heavily, spotting Christophe over by the door, holding Emma.

"My leg!" Damien shouts, writhing on the floor. "He did something to my leg!"

"Let me see!" Pip says, going for his belt.

"No - you can't-" Damien groans, but doesn't seem to have the energy to stop Pip from tugging his pants down. Kenny sits up, feeling the shape of his lungs with every breath. He's not sure what he _was_ just then. It wasn't human, but it was preoccupied with maudlin thoughts about his father all the same.

"You have to let me see!" Pip says when Damien feebly tries to pry Pip's hands off of him. "Kenny, oh, what have you done, don't you know this is where he's been hurting? Why were you fighting, what happened?"

Pip gasps when he pulls Damien's trousers down far enough to expose the disgusting mess of the bandages he's wrapped around his thigh. They smell horrible and look worse, soaked through in places with pus and dried blood, heavy with sweat. Damien groans and rips them away himself when Pip freezes in shock.

Kenny exhales when he sees what's beneath the bandages. It's not the widening void of flesh he saw when he put his hand there during their fight. There's nothing amiss at all, aside from a slight pinkness to Damien's restored skin, the muscles of his thigh twitching as he studies the spot where the wound should be, his mouth hanging open.

"There," Kenny says, panting. "See?"

Damien looks up at him, still open-mouthed. Pip is staring, too, looking confused. Kenny is afraid to look at Christophe, not wanting an eyeful of I-told-you-so. He wasn't necessarily right, anyway.

"You fixed it," Pip says. Kenny winces, knowing Damien won't like hearing that, but Damien doesn't seem to have heard anything. He's staring at Kenny with passive astonishment, pale-faced, like he's seeing a ghost.

"I think I'm going now," Kenny says, because he can feel a tingling in his gut, the beginning of the process of getting sucked back out of hell.

"Wait," Damien says.

"I can't."

"Kenny," Pip says, breathing his name out. "How did you do this?"

Kenny looks at Christophe, as if he'll be able to explain. Christophe is as nakedly surprised as the other two. Only Emma seems unimpressed, sucking on two fingers and looking from her parents to Christophe, waiting for someone to pay attention to her.

"Oh, fuck," Kenny says, because he's already halfway faded, getting that seasick feeling like he's riding a roller coaster in reverse. He looks at Damien. "Um," he says, hoping that Damien will understand that he can't explain, either.

"What about my daughter?" Damien asks, whipping around to look at her. "If I'm healed, will she still - will she be alright?"

"Yes," Kenny says, barely managing to get the word out before he's gone. He knows Damien heard him; he can feel it as he's erased from one world and returned to another. Now he understands what Christophe meant before, though he still thinks lying was the wrong word, something lost in translation from French to English. Kenny isn't sure that what's been fixed will last. He just wants it to. All he can do is hope that what he wants matters.

He wakes up in bed in the house he bought for his mother, in what's considered his bedroom. He's never spent a full night here, but it's the place where he lands when he returns to earth. He's on his back in bed, wearing the too-tight parka from high school that always reappears when he wakes, as if it's a protective skin that helped him travel through time and space. He blinks at the ceiling groggily, flexing his fingers. The light through the window has the quality of early evening. It takes him a moment to remember what season this is, unless that season has passed since he died: winter, just a few weeks from Christmas. He'd been wanting one of those peppermint mocha things when he crossed the street toward Harbucks.

His eyes sting a little as he sits up; they usually do. He's glad to be here, just a few blocks from the library, in this quiet house he helped his mother buy two years ago. She works in the stock room at Bed, Bath & Beyond and pays her own mortgage, which is small, because Kenny gave her a forty percent down payment. He did well with stocks while he could, able to anticipate certain things. Wendy makes good money, too, now that she's been elected the South Park superintendent of schools. Kenny shuts his eyes again, thinking of her. In all of the excitement, he's failed to come up with even an inkling of an idea for an excuse about his absence. He gets out of bed, hoping that his mother is home, so she can tell him what day this is and maybe make him some Easy Mac.

"Kenny?" she calls when she hears him on the stairs. She never seems surprised to see him when he wakes up in her house; even when he was supposed to be hours away at college, she always took it in stride. He used to ask her what she thought he was doing here, but it only confused and upset her. He's always suspected that she has no explanations for him about what he is.

"It's me," he says, walking into the kitchen. She's at the table, bent over the tablet he got her last Christmas. She obsessively monitors Karen's Facebook page and contributes controversial posts to several online knitting communities. He bends down to kiss her forehead and takes a seat beside her at the table, not ready to go home and face Wendy. "How's it going, Mommy?" he asks. He's always kind of raw after returning, and appreciates the fact that his mother is usually here when he wakes up in a new body, and that she never questions why he's come back or where he's been. It feels like some kind of grace.

"Oh, I'm alright, I guess," she says, reaching over to squeeze his wrist. "You're wearing your old jacket?"

"I'm nostalgic about this one. Have you got any Easy Mac?"

"Sure, I do," she says, smiling. "I could fix you some. You hungry?"

"Uh-huh. Thanks."

She gets up, looking glad to have something to do for him. She's enthusiastic about taking care of him now, and he tries not to imagine that she thinks of it as penance for his childhood, when she didn't take care of anyone, or anything. She's an addict; he's been to rehab in two different lifetimes, and he's done a lot of talking about this. He's tired when he thinks of it now, and just wants to sit with her in the quiet of the kitchen, forking junk food and listening to her complaints about Karen.

"Heard from your sister lately?" she asks before she's even returned to her seat, setting a hot bowl of mac 'n cheese down in front of him.

"Nope," he says, taking the fork she offers. She sighs and sits down, shaking her head at her tablet and dragging her finger across its screen to wake it up.

"That girl," she says. "Miss Chicken. You think she minds when I call her that? Think she'll be home for Christmas?"

"I don't know," Kenny says, eating. It's like the munchies times a thousand, coming back to life and being able to have food again. He always wants this processed shit right off the bat, and not even fast food; he wants powdered things from boxes, the food of his childhood. "Karen's okay, though, she's just busy."

"Busy," his mother says, scoffing. "Well, I know that. Busy with what? She say anything to you about a boyfriend? I worry about her."

"She's not gay, if that's what you mean."

"Kenny!" she says, pretending to be offended. "You don't think so?"

"Nope."

"How come?"

"She had a serious boyfriend," Kenny says. "Once."

"When? She never told me! She didn't even go to her prom."

"This was ages ago," Kenny says. He looks up at her. "A lifetime ago. But there was a guy. Don't be so bigoted, anyway. You know my best friends are gay."

"I ain't being – don't put it like that! I just don't want that for her, alright? Seems like a lonely kind of life. And Kevin will never give me grandbabies, none that he'd have visiting rights to, anyway. And you." She shrugs in the face of his angry stare. "Well! Wendy's got the hips for it. Ya'll have all that money. What are you waiting for?"

"Mom, Jesus, not now."

"Why not now? She's almost thirty, Kenny! Well, alright, it's none of my business."

"You got that right," he says, though he wants to commiserate, wants to cry and tell her that they've been trying for three years and that he thinks they'll need a surrogate like Stan and Kyle, or, God forbid, a sperm donor. Wendy made him promise not to discuss their fertility issues with his mother, so he keeps shoveling mac and cheese in, saying nothing.

"I seen your friend Stan on the news the other day," she says. "Speaking of them."

"Yeah?" Kenny looks up from his bowl, pausing in mid-chew. "What happened?"

"He saved some kid down at the Wall-Mart. I don't see why they need to be interviewing paramedics, but I guess it's good to have a happy story. Seems like he was just doing his job, though."

"Stan is pretty good at his job," Kenny says, turning back to his food. "What was the matter with the kid?"

"He ate part of the gingerbread village. They used glue, I guess, just made to look like frosting, but it was really glue. Your friend Stan pumped that kid's stomach right there on the floor of the Wall-Mart, by Automotive, with a whole crowd watching. It was a real big story. You didn't see that?"

"Nope," Kenny says. "I don't really, uh. Watch local news."

"Well, he might have told you! But maybe he didn't want to brag."

"Hey, what day is it?" Kenny asks, looking up again. "I'm kinda. I've been-"

"It's Friday," his mother says, frowning. "What kind of question is that? You hadn't been-"

"No, I haven't been using," Kenny says, because he's decided not to go with that story, though no other excuses for his absence are coming to mind. "I'm just tired. Been busy at work, you know. December is a big month for us." That's a lie; it's always slow at the library after school lets out. He looks up at his mother to see if the month of December is still current, and it seems to be. She's nodding to herself as if she's perfectly aware of the rush on libraries during the holiday season. Since it's Friday, he might have been gone for only four days. He decides that must be true, since the gingerbread village is still on display at Wall-Mart. They take it down after Christmas.

Still, on the walk home, he can't come up with anything to tell Wendy. Four days with no phone call and no notice is unthinkable in a marriage; it was bad enough when they were dating. He feels so far away from her, like he's returning after decades of fighting some foreign war, and he has to smash his eyes shut and envision their last morning together before he died. He opens his eyes again when he considers that he's walking alongside a road that, while not busy, might send another car hurtling at him.

That last morning: she got out of bed at 7:30, like always. Kenny lingered through two more snooze cycles. He was brushing his teeth when she stepped out of her shower. They talked about her work: Craig Tucker is the principal at South Park Elementary, and Ike Broflovski is the vice principal, and it's her most successful but most demanding school. That morning, Wendy was complaining about Craig's zero tolerance policies that have resulted in kids getting suspended for chewing gum, and about Ike's total disregard for state mandated policies that actually matter, like not covering for the kids he likes when they're caught with cigarettes. Kenny was in his boxers at the sink, and Wendy was naked, wrapped in a towel, squeezing the excess moisture from the ends of her wet hair. She keeps saying she's getting too old for such long hair, that she should cut it, and Kenny begs her not to.

"Ike assumes that all these kids are as mature as he was when he was young," Wendy said that morning, leaning beside Kenny at the bathroom counter. "He thinks he's doing them a favor by letting them off the hook, but that's not always true. And _Craig_, he wants to incarcerate anyone who writes graffiti about him on the bathroom stalls. And I don't think he's exaggerating."

That's all Kenny remembers from the conversation. It was familiar territory, and he was distracted by Wendy's bare shoulders, and the way her cheeks were flushed from the steam in the shower. He wanted to have sex, he remembers that, but didn't suggest it, because they were running late, like always, and because it's become a sensitive subject. Three years back, they laughed at each other for wanting kids so early, but Kenny could see that she was relieved, like he was, that they were on the same page. She went off birth control, and they said they would just do what came naturally and see what happened. Kenny thought he'd be fine if it took a while for her to actually get pregnant, maybe even relieved, but after the first few months he was already anxious, and he could see that she was, too. They tried things in the years that followed: timing, hormone pills, positions that were supposed to assist with fertilization. Now they just don't talk about it, but every time Kenny crawls over to her in bed, they're both thinking about what probably won't happen.

He's always wondered if he can't get her pregnant because he's not fully human. He winces at the thought and pushes it away.

The sun dips and sets as he gets closer to his neighborhood. It's Friday night in South Park, two weeks from Christmas: kids will be skating on the rink they've set up in the middle of town, young couples will be wrapping up their pre-gaming before appearing to claim their reservations at the town's few decent restaurants, older couples will be approaching drunkenness in the dark of their living rooms, watching Netflix by the glow of a Christmas tree. Single people, well. He doesn't know what they do. Except, yes he does, because he was very single in his previous lifetime: he would drink beer, watch TV, maybe fold some laundry, try not to think about where he would go if he wanted to buy drugs. He wonders if that will be his fate in this lifetime, too. He still doesn't have a story for Wendy.

As he gets close to their house, the same one that Wendy lived in with Tweek in the alternate world that only Kenny remembers, he tries to imagine which friends he'll go to when she throws him out, whose Friday night plans he'll spoil with his misery. Kyle and Stan are probably over at Ike and Bebe's house, trying not to obsess over Bebe's pregnancy too openly. Kyle has been manic with a combination of anxiety and excitement ever since they found out the insemination was successful, and he hovers around Bebe like Tinkerbell, offering to cook meals for her as an excuse to vet what she eats. Kenny has been hanging out with Stan a lot, since Kyle is constantly over at his brother's house, and Stan is excited, too, passing the days with clumsy attempts at carpentry: he wants to make the baby's crib himself, and Kenny has been trying to help, but it's not proving as easy as either of them expected so far.

He supposes he could also go to Butters, though Cartman would certainly forbid him from staying the night. Butters is an expert in making people feel better about themselves, hence Cartman's need of him, and Kenny would endure Cartman's taunts in the background if that meant he could momentarily drown his sorrows in sugar cookies and hugs and all of the other downy soft things he associates with Butters. They might be on duty, though; they work most Friday and Saturday nights. What little police work there is to be done in South Park usually happens then, when the population is largely intoxicated.

He'll probably end up back at his mother's house, back in that bed he woke up in. Depressed by the prospect, he pauses on the street to stand for a while and look at their house. He put white lights along the line of the roof, but Wendy hasn't turned them on. He can't see the glow of their Christmas tree in the front window, either. He's surprised that her car is in the driveway, because she almost always has to work late on Friday nights, finalizing status reports or overseeing afterschool functions. They usually go out for a late dinner on Fridays, to the Italian place that has upscale aspirations, or to the sushi place, if they feel like drinking sake instead of wine. Wendy will air her grievances about work, telling him the best stories from the six schools she's responsible for overseeing. It's always when her feelings about her job are most obvious: she really loves it, even the complaining. Kenny will talk about the library, which mostly means talking about Tweek, his single co-worker who isn't a high school-aged volunteer. Exchanging Craig and Tweek gossip is one of their favorite Friday night pastimes, and sometimes when they're laughing about what an odd couple those two are, Kenny wants to tell her what's really funny, that _she_ was with Tweek in a past life, and that he cheated on her with Craig, who was a Scrooge-like millionaire. Craig and Tweek are together because of Wendy, or maybe because of Kenny, since he's the one who told Wendy that Tweek was alone and crying out by the honors parking lot on his first day back to school after his father died. Wendy went to Craig, told him this, and asked him what the hell he was going to do about it. Now Craig and Tweek share a condo, and Craig picks Tweek up from his shift at the library on weekdays, sometimes sparing a middle finger for Kenny, who can't help grinning at them, glad for the way things are because he remembers the way they were.

Kenny lingers outside, watching the house, and braces himself for the possibility of never having a late Friday night dinner with Wendy again, and of collecting Craig and Tweek stories that no one will want to hear, because no one appreciates them like she does. He reaches into his coat pocket, thinking of having a cigarette in honor of the apocalypse that's come, but the pack is gone; he left them in hell.

"Honey," Kenny says, whispering this under his breath as he walks to the door. "Seems I was gone four days, but it only felt like a few hours for me, and not 'cause I was high. I just had some business to see to in the underworld, you know, I'm some kind of overseeing entity for the son of Satan, you remember him? No? Well, he turned me into a platypus once, apparently-"

He reaches the door and stops talking, surprised to find that it's unlocked. South Park is relatively crime-free, but Wendy usually locks the door out of habit. They went to college together in Denver, and they like to consider themselves citified because of that. Kyle, who got his undergraduate degree in New York, assures them that they're not. Kenny tries to put all of this out of his mind as he walks into the house, but he wants to cling to these normal things, to be glad to have returned and not guilty for being gone.

"Hon?" he calls when he's inside. The first floor of the house is dark, except for a light in the kitchen. "Wendy?" he says, walking back, but she's not there, and the light that's on is just the one over the stove. He wonders if she's put out search parties, called the police. After his last disappearance, she might not have. On his way back through the living room, he flips the switch that turns on the Christmas tree.

"Dude," he mutters, and he's not sure if he's talking to the tree, or God, or what. "Help me out here."

As he walks upstairs, he sees that the second floor of the house is mostly, dark, too. There's a rustling sound from the master bedroom, and he recognizes it as the comforter moving across their bed. He walks down the hallway, glad to see that she's put a light on in the bedroom, because the darkness of the rest of the house is troubling him.

"Hey," he says as he pushes the bedroom door all the way open. "It's me." She's in bed, wide-eyed, and he can't tell if it's righteous anger or just surprise. "Did I scare you? Sorry, I-"

"Kenny?" she says, and her voice is so small and terrified that he hurries to her, alarmed. She backs up against the headboard, pressing a hand over her open mouth.

"I'm okay," Kenny says, sitting beside her. She makes a pinched, sorrowful noise, her eyes widening further. "I wish I could explain, but - goddamn, Wen, what's wr-"

"You're dead," she says, shuddering when she sobs this out. "You can't - you can't be here, you can't be real, they made me." She slaps her hand over her mouth and sobs again. "They made me identify your body! You were – broken, I-"

"Shh, no, that's - fuck." Kenny is shaking when he reaches for her, afraid that she'll slap him away and call him a monster. He's not sure yet if he's horrified or relieved by this - whatever this is. She cries out when he touches her, almost as if she's in pain. He freezes, but she's on him before he can remember to breathe, crawling into his lap and squeezing him hard, sobbing onto his shoulder.

"Oh my God," she says, over and over, rubbing her hands everywhere, across his back and up into his hair. "Oh my God, oh my God-"

"Baby," Kenny says, his voice breaking. He puts his hands on her waist and leans back, trying to get her to meet his eyes. She's frantic to touch every part of him, and she's trembling so hard that he's afraid she'll burst apart in his hands.

"What - how - no, I don't care," she says, crying hard, cupping his cheeks. She shakes her head. "I don't care how you're here, I don't care what you are, oh, fuck, Kenny, you're so - you're so warm, you're _real_, Jesus Christ, if I'm dreaming I don't want to wake up, please." She sobs and shuts her eyes, tilting her face toward the ceiling. "Please, don't make me wake up, I don't want to wake up."

"Hey, hey, c'mere," Kenny says, pulling her face to his. She cries and kisses his cheeks, her lips shaking. "You're not dreaming," he says, and his eyes are starting to leak now, too. "You just - you remember. You actually remember me dying?"

"I feel like I've gone crazy," she says, her sobs making her jerk in his arms. "My mother - I called her today and it was like she didn't want to talk about it, to even fucking _acknowledge_ it, and before, the first few days, everyone was here, helping me, bringing me things, but then, today, it was like, like-"

"Like they forgot?" Kenny says. He sniffles and nods, letting her lick the tears from the corners of his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah. My whole life. My whole - whatever it is. Everyone forgets, every time. Jesus, you remember - you remember how I died, everything?"

"A car," Wendy says, her face pinching up again. "It was the same - the same old man who killed Mr. Tweak! He was driving without a license, oh fuck, I wanted him dead, Kenny, I wanted to kill him myself, he took you from me-"

"Shh," Kenny says, letting her hide her face against his neck when she loses the ability to speak, crying in violent jags. "I'm not dead," he says, rubbing her back. "Not. Not anymore."

"I don't care why you're here," she says, the words muffled against his skin. "You don't have to tell me. Just don't go. Please, _please_, don't leave me, don't leave me alone again."

"I won't," he says, though it's not really a promise he can make. He rocks her in his arms, trying to get his thoughts in order, to figure out what to explain first, what to leave out and what to include. He keeps getting distracted by how desperately she's clinging to him, and all he can do is stroke her back, trying to comfort her with his solidity.

"Kenny," she says, softly, over and over, her fingers tickling through the slight curl in the hair at the back of his neck. "Kenny, Kenny, oh, God, please don't leave me."

"I never thought anyone would remember," Kenny says, and he starts crying again when he says so, laughing at himself for it. "Even my mother never has. I wonder why, why now?" He thinks of Damien, the look on his face as Kenny faded away.

"Did it hurt?" Wendy asks, sitting back, sniffling. Her face is a blotchy mess, and it's clear that she's been crying for days. "When you - the car-?"

"Not too bad," Kenny says. He kisses her jaw, tasting the tears that are streaming down along it. "God, okay - I can finally ask someone. Who gave my eulogy?"

Wendy huffs a disbelieving laugh, new tears pooling in her eyes. She shakes her head.

"Kyle," she says. "It was terrible. I mean, it was touching, but he broke down - oh. Then Stan took over for him and he was even worse. Then, um." She smiles shakily. "Butters actually pulled off a good one. Kenny, ha. How?"

"I don't know," Kenny says. "I just wake up in bed at my mother's house. When I disappeared three years back, when I told you I'd gone on a bender with Kevin? I was dead, Wendy. And in college, remember when I missed our biology final and you got so mad at me? Same thing, I just. I'm just now figuring it all out myself, or trying to, but nobody's ever explained it to me, either."

She sits back and watches him for awhile, still playing with his hair. He knows this feeling because he's experienced it before, twice: the gut-twisting moment when she'll either believe in him or decide that she can't.

"I always thought you were a miracle," she says. "Since I was about ten years old, I thought that." She closes her eyes and leans forward, pressing a trembling kiss over the bridge of his nose. "Why would this happen?" she asks, sitting back again. "Where do you go when you're gone?"

"Nowhere, really," he says, because he's not ready to explain about hell, too blown apart by her remembering to even think straight. "It's like a blink. I close my eyes, and when I open them I'm at Mom's house, in bed." Sometimes this is true.

"I hated you, last time," she says, shaking her head. "And you're saying - there was a funeral? I've been through this before?"

"At least five times since we started dating," Kenny says. "More when we were younger. It's - it's fucked up. I don't know what to tell you."

"I think you could tell me anything and I'd be glad," she says, closing her eyes and pressing her face to his. "As long as you're here. As long as I can keep you. And there's some part of me that – knew, I think. When you died, I couldn't accept it, and I guess that's not unusual, but it was just so fundamentally – I mean, it felt _impossible_. I kept wanting to beat on everyone's chests and ask them what the hell was wrong with them, why they were just – fuck, I don't know. Giving up. And I was the one who'd. Seen you. At the morgue." She shudders and holds him closer.

"God, I'm sorry," Kenny says, petting her hair. "You shouldn't have had to see that. I should be more careful." He's tried that before, and it didn't work. Something wants him doing odd jobs in the afterlife, and he's afraid he'll die again, and that she won't remember next time. Wendy's stomach makes an irritable noise, and she laughs when Kenny looks down at her.

"Sorry," she says. "I haven't had – since you. Since you've been gone, I've barely eaten anything, I haven't had an appetite. Now I'm fucking starving."

"We could go to Gianni's," Kenny says, grinning at the thought of breadsticks and pasta. Wendy thumps her hand against his chest.

"We can't just - go to Gianni's!" she says. "I mean, that sounds - really good, but - Kenny! You were dead! And, Jesus, I don't know how to _function_ with this. Like, what – we just. Go back to normal, now?"

"Nobody else is going to remember," Kenny says. "I don't think they will, anyway. So they won't stare at you for being out on the town with your dead husband."

"Don't call yourself that!" Wendy says, squeezing around him.

"Sorry. But hey, maybe I should call Kyle and check. My mom didn't seem to remember, but that's, you know. She's not a reliable control subject."

"You can call Kyle," Wendy says. She sighs and sits back to give him a dry kiss on the lips. "Just, um. Don't let go of me. Hold me the whole time."

"Yeah, definitely. Can do."

He scoots over toward the bedside table and grabs the phone with his free hand, settling against the headboard and hugging her to his chest while he dials. Kyle picks up on the third ring.

"Yeah?" he says, and Kenny grins. They're family, basically; they answer the phone with a combination of annoyance and trepidation when they get an unexpected call.

"It's me," Kenny says. "I'm alive."

"Good to know," Kyle says. "Where have guys been? I haven't seen you or Wendy for, like." Kenny imagines him consulting Stan in the pause that follows. "Three days or something."

"Oh, you know," Kenny says. He wishes Kyle were here in person, wants to hug him and Stan against his chest, too. Every trip to hell is a reminder of the years without them, that day when he returned and they were gone. "Work and shit. We've just been busy. We should get together, like, tomorrow?"

"Sure," Kyle says. "I've got that birth partner class in the morning with Bebe, but after that-"

"Can't you let Ike go to that thing with her?" Kenny asks, mostly just to rile him.

"Ike can go with her when he's put a baby in there himself! I'm the one who's going to be in the delivery room with her, so it stands to reason that I should be the one-"

"Okay, okay. But you guys are free tomorrow night?"

"Yes - well. My mother wanted us to come over, but I'd been hoping to get out of that. I'll tell them we have plans with you guys. Can we bring anything?"

"Bring anything? We're hosting?"

"Kenny, this place is a mess, you have no idea, and you know how I feel about Wendy - judging my housekeeping."

"Yeah, I do know about that," Kenny says, looking down at Wendy to make sure she heard that. She sniffs and rolls her eyes. "Okay, we'll host. Bring wine, I don't know. Ooh, actually - bring that rum cake. The one you made for Stan's birthday."

"Kenny, I don't have time to make a cake-"

"Please? It's a special occasion!"

"What's the occasion?"

"My return from the dead," Kenny says.

"Oh, right. Fine. But do not invite Butters, please. I can't abide Cartman right now. I'm too stressed out."

"They're probably working, anyway," Kenny says. "Alright, I gotta go. Me and Wends are gonna get some dinner. Give our love to Stan, alright?"

"Yes, sure."

"And Kyle?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you, too, okay?" Kenny says, imagining Kyle up at the podium in the Catholic church, trying to give his eulogy and falling apart.

"Oh, God, okay. Yes, Kenny, we love you. Stan says to tell you that. He's drunk, by the way. He loves everyone right now. But especially you, he says. Alright, see you tomorrow."

They hang up, and Kenny sets the phone back in its cradle. He looks down at Wendy, and her eyes are wet again, but she's smiling.

"They didn't remember," she says.

"Seems that way. I almost wish you didn't have to."

"No, I'm glad," she says, sitting up a little. "It's strange - all of this should sound crazier than it does, but it explains so many little things. Like that scar that disappeared after you came back from rehab, and the dress I wore to your funeral - it was so - _funerary_, and I didn't remember ever buying it. Kenny." She exhales, shaking her head. "Just tell me one thing, and then we can call Gianni's and make a reservation."

"Okay." He straightens his shoulders, afraid of what she might ask. She chews on her bottom lip and studies him for a moment.

"What do you think you are?" she asks.

He looks down at their hands, lacing his fingers through hers. He's come up with a hundred explanations for himself over the years, and he's always rejected them as soon as they've formed.

"I think I'm something that slipped between the cracks," he says. "Like a loophole, or like - this thing that fell off the assembly line before it was finished being made. And there's good and bad in that. I'm trying to do what I can with the good." He looks up at her again. "That's all I know. I'm pretty sure, at this point, that it's all I'll ever know." He wishes he could tell her about the broken world that Christophe and Damien fixed, and about what happened when he was at the Big House today, but trying to explain why he comes back from the dead is enough for one day.

"Is this, um." She pinches her eyes shut. "I wasn't going to say this, but I'm so tired of pretending I don't think about it, and now that I've got you back it seems stupid to have ever wanted more, but." She opens her eyes again, and he knows what she's going to say. "Is this why we can't have a baby?"

He wants to do what he did for Damien when he left, to promise something that he can only hope is true, but no amount of hope could compensate for lying to her about this.

"Maybe," he says. They hold each other's gaze for a long time, frozen, as if this thing that he's said is a predator that tracks motion. Finally, Wendy nods.

"As long as I've got you," she says, because one of them has to say something, and they fall together again, arms around each other.

At dinner, they talk about everything but Kenny's death: Stan and Kyle and their mixed hysteria over Bebe's pregnancy, and Bebe's saint-like acceptance of this, which is probably helped along by Ike, who has a mellowing presence on everyone he loves, with the possible exception of Kyle. Wendy talks about work, which segues into talk about Craig and her latest difficulties with him. There's some discussion of Karen and whether or not she'll make time to come home for Christmas.

"I was thinking about my dad today," Kenny says, sawing at some overcooked chicken parmesan.

"Yeah?" Wendy looks up from her plate, obviously surprised. "What about him?"

"Just about that kid he had with his Wall-Mart mistress. I've got this brother I've never met."

"We could adopt, you know," Wendy says, and now it's Kenny's turn to look up in surprise.

"Adopt who? My half-brother?"

"No!" Wendy laughs. "Just. Just, somebody. Some kid." She shrugs and looks back to her plate, pushing ravioli around.

"Yeah, we could," Kenny says. He thinks of Kyle without Stan, having his forehead mopped by Christophe while he wept for the home he didn't remember. There's some Kyle out there who doesn't have a Christophe, or a Stan, or a Kenny.

"Just something to think about," Wendy says. She seems embarrassed, and Kenny wishes she wouldn't be. It's not her fault, and any complications with adopting won't be her fault, either. He's the one who went to rehab, and who won't be able to explain to adoption agencies that he did it to save his marriage, not because of any actual drug use. He won't even be able to grovel convincingly, because he is an addict, did need rehab once, and they'll see it on him.

They're quiet for the rest of the meal, and during the drive home, but as soon as they cross the threshold of the bedroom Wendy is upon him, pulling his snow-damp clothes off and kissing him, her breath stuttery and fast. He feels like it's been months since he's touched her, and he's hard before they've even hit the bed, where he grinds down against her like they're kids again, rolling around on top of their homework. She used to _beg_ him to fuck her, almost sobbing for it, the words hot and damp against his ear when they made out, but he made himself wait until she was sixteen, because she was so young, and he could see it even when he felt young himself, how vulnerable and precious she was. Now they've surpassed the age they'd reached in that other life, and it's been a long time since he held back with her. For the past few years their sex life has had a mournful edge to it, but he doesn't feel that tonight, maybe because he's just come back to life. He's a virgin in this body, and his cock is so heavy, so fucking hard as she rubs him through his pants. He's sighing into her wet mouth, feeling teenaged again, needing release but wanting to last, to impress her.

"I was dead without you," she says, whispering this. She's crying again, but when he tries to pull his hand out of her panties she holds it there, nodding, her eyes dropping shut. "Please," she whispers, tilting her hips up, rubbing herself against his fingers. He moans, because it's so like it was when they were kids, her cheeks flushing when she asks. "Please, I need you so much."

He'd managed to forget that she does need him, and want him, and think about having him when he's not here, that she's not just hoping for a baby every time they fuck. This lets loose something that was damned up, and it's like that first time he let himself really fuck her, after a couple of slow, careful, experimental rounds - this was all in the same long afternoon, when her parents were in Boulder for a spa day. She was begging, still begging, and he was frustrated with how daring she'd always been and how scared he'd been of hurting her, or failing to be the adult, even if he wasn't technically one. When he finally fucked her like a sixteen-year-old boy who'd already blown his load twice in the past hour, she came for him, shouting his name and helping herself along with her hand while he pounded her. This time is like that time, both of them clawing their pleasure from each other, unable to put their hands around enough of it, and Wendy sobs when she comes, but there's nothing mournful in it. Kenny buries his face between her neck and shoulder and cries out, unloading what feels like two lifetimes' worth of stored up seed, what little energy he had left draining out of him with it.

In bed, they cuddle up together, holding on to each other in the dark, both of them wide awake despite their exhaustion. Wendy puts her head on his chest, and he combs her hair through his fingers. It was filthy and matted when he got here, but she showered before they went out to eat, and now it's smooth and clean, a few strands floating through the air under the brush of his fingers, held up by static.

"Your heart beat," she says, pressing her cheek against it more firmly.

"My heart beat?"

"It's so real," she says, her hand sliding across his chest. "You're real."

"It's true." It's probably the only word he'll ever have for himself, and she's the only one who can make it mean something.

They sleep, and Kenny dreams of Damien and Pip in a birth partner class. Damien is the pregnant one, sour and chubby, younger than he's looked in a long time. Then he turns into Kyle, and Pip becomes Kenny.

"Shouldn't Stan be doing this?" Kenny says in the dream, Kyle sitting between his legs and leaning back against his chest.

"Stan is in Canada," Kyle says, as if this explains everything. "Now help me push!"

"How am I supposed to help you push? What are you even - pushing out of?"

"Kenny!"

"What?"

"Oh, fine, go do your own baby," Kyle says irritably, sitting forward. He gestures across the room, and Kenny turns to see Wendy sitting there with Stan, laughing about something and letting him touch her very pregnant stomach.

"What do you two think you're doing?" Kenny asks, afraid that Stan was able to get Wendy pregnant when he couldn't.

"We were prom King and Queen," Stan says with a shrug. "Kyle, stop," he says. "You can't breastfeed."

"Like hell I can't," Kyle says, and when Kenny looks down again Kyle is holding an infant with very bright red hair, pulling his shirt up to offer it a nipple.

"Kenny," Wendy says, and by her tone he knows that she's calling him to her, asking him to be her partner, but when he looks up she and Stan are both gone. "Kenny," she says, again, from elsewhere, and Kyle and his baby are gone, too, the whole room empty.

Kenny wakes feeling panicked, but it's morning and Wendy is there, close enough to stroke his hair back off his forehead. She's kneeling on the floor by the bed, her arms folded on the edge of the mattress and her chin resting on them.

"Hey," she says. She's crying, but she's smiling, too.

"I just had the weirdest dream," Kenny says.

"Yeah?" She sobs and wipes at her face, laughing. "Sorry, just. I was afraid you wouldn't be here. That I'd dreamed it."

"C'mere," he says, and he pulls her into his arms, until all her weight has dropped onto him, so she can feel that he's still real, that she won't sink through him.

"What was your dream?" she asks, smoothing her thumb along the line of his jaw.

"Um, let's see. Well, Kyle was breastfeeding."

"Oh, perfect," Wendy says, laughing hard. She pulls back to grin at him, her face a mess of snot and tears. "Perfect."

"Surely a good omen," Kenny agrees, beaming at her.

Five months later, Jacob Marsh-Broflovski is born, and Kyle is indeed the one who goes into the delivery room with Bebe, along with her mother, much to Kyle's chagrin. There's an alleged fight over breathing exercises, but Jacob is a perfect baby, and Kyle is very relieved to see that he's inherited Stan's silky black hair. Wendy is five months pregnant and already growing awkward with enormity, but she still does all the baby shower arrangements and seems to constantly be over at Kyle's or Ike's during the first few weeks of Jacob's life, either helping Bebe pump breast milk or getting a diaper changing tutorial from Stan. Kenny is exhausted just from watching all of this, usually with a Coors Light in hand and from a good distance, but mostly he's excited, ready to meet his daughter.

In the months before they found out Wendy was pregnant, Kenny thought her ability to remember his death was a gift from Damien, and he still thinks that's probably the case. He hasn't died since then, and he's starting to think that if he did, he wouldn't come back. He got a gift that day, but he gave something up, too, without knowing it. If he'd had to give it up for his daughter, he would have, and maybe that's exactly what he did. He feels different now, lighter and smaller, closer to the ground, and if he gave up his immortality when he healed Damien, he's glad. Not because Damien deserved it, even if Kenny was some sort of guardian who'd always been waiting to save him. He's glad because, without whatever power he had, he's human enough to know who he'd give up his life for.

"What if our kids get married?" Stan asks one afternoon, just a month from Wendy's due date. He's giving Jacob a bottle as he asks this, and Kyle is asleep with his head in Stan's lap, his arm hooked around Stan's thigh like he's holding on to a life preserver.

"I didn't even realize that was up for debate," Kenny says. "Why give them a choice? Let's draw up the contract now."

Five years later, riding shotgun on the way to the kids' first day of kindergarten, Kenny thinks of the arranged marriage contract that never got drawn up when Jacob reaches over to pat Kenny's obviously terrified daughter's hand. Christine startles and looks at Jacob like he's an alien, though they've been in each other's company almost constantly since infancy.

"Christie isn't talking," Jacob announces.

"Yes, I am," Christine says, though she isn't. She's a nervous kid anyway, and she's been anxious about school all summer. It's possible that she's overheard more stories about Craig's totalitarian tendencies than Kenny and Wendy realized.

"It's okay to be quiet," Kyle says. He's driving, far more nervous about Jacob's first day than Jacob is, both hands tight around the steering wheel. "It's a big day. A lot to think about."

"Your teacher is really nice," Kenny reminds Christine, reaching into the backseat to take her hand. "Remember, we met her last week?"

"Yes," Christine says, softly. She fidgets, adjusting the powder blue backpack that she has in her lap. "She had hair like Kyle."

"That's right," Kyle says, smoothing his hair down self-consciously. "Always a good sign. And Jacob will be in your class."

"Yeah, I'll be in your class," Jacob reiterates, with an air of exasperation, as if he can't imagine how she's failing to see that this means everything will be fine. He looks a lot like Stan did at his age, and he's got a combination of Stan's confidence and Kyle's bossiness that will either get him far in life or make him very unpopular, but he's a sweet kid, just kind of – loud. He actually reminds Kenny of Butters at moments, but he would never tell Kyle and Stan that. Kyle says Kenny will understand when his son is older, and it's true that Clint is much more boisterous than Christine ever was as a baby, but Jacob was sleepy and calm until his teeth started coming in, as far as Kenny remembers.

When they're heading toward the front doors of the school, Kenny wants to pick Christine up and carry her, alarmed by how old and mean the fourth and fifth graders look, gathered in noisy groups around the front stairs. He resists the urge to carry her but does hold her hand, and she squeezes his tightly, her shoulder bumping against his leg as they walk.

"Mommy will be here to visit you at lunch," Kenny says when they've found her classroom and her desk, which is not far from Jacob's. "That'll be good, right?"

"Will she have Clint?" Christine asks, and Kenny can't tell which answer she wants, but he shakes his head.

"No, 'cause she'll be at work, you know, she basically runs this place."

"Yeah," Christine says, looking nervous about this. Wendy put barrettes in her hair this morning, little pink plastic things with owls on them. Owls are scholarly, Wendy said. Christine looks a lot like Karen did when she was little, timid and skinny, but she's got Wendy's bright gray eyes and Kenny's hair, shiny gold and straight. "What's Kyle doing to Jacob's desk?" she asks.

Kenny turns. "Um, I think he's disinfecting it."

"Do I need to do that?" Christine asks.

"I don't think so," Kenny says. "But we can if you want."

"That's okay."

They both look down at the top of her desk, where she's set her new pencil box and a notebook with smiling frogs all over it. Frogs are her thing, ever since Kenny took her to the natural science museum in Denver over the summer. A traveling show with live frogs was on display, and she liked the poison dart ones best, because they were colorful. Kenny wouldn't even let her touch the glass. Damien's theory was that Kenny's and Karen's children would be immortal, too, but Kenny doesn't share that theory, and doesn't ever want it tested. He hasn't died since the time he went to hell and healed Damien's thigh. The McCormicks are somewhat obsessed with safety.

"Actually, hey," Kenny says. "Disinfecting couldn't hurt. Kyle?" He puts his hand out. "Let me have some of that stuff."

He cleans Christine's desk while the other children and parents listen to a greeting from the teacher, Mrs. Black, formerly Ms. Blake, aka Red. Token and Becca live just outside of town in a giant house that Token designed himself, and the fact that Becca doesn't need to work but still wants to be a kindergarten teacher probably means she loves this job, which probably means she'll be good. Kenny and Wendy have had much discussion about this with Stan and Kyle since they realized Becca would be teaching their kids. Kenny is glad she's still around, because he likes Token and is happy to have him here in town, even if he did date Wendy in some past life. All of that has felt increasingly remote since Christine was born, like a dream Kenny once had, but sometimes a random incident will remind him of it very starkly, like Kyle making a pineapple upside down cake or Karen dating some asshole who reminds him of Damien. He does wonder whatever happened to Damien and Pip and their daughter, and if Christophe is still looking out for her. He scans the classroom for any black-haired little girls, but there are none. Everyone here is relatively familiar; it's a small town. Henrietta has found her daughter a seat near the front, and Kenny wonders if Zelda Donovan and Christine might become friends. Zelda is shy like Christine, round-cheeked and always blushing.

"Daddy?" Christine says when the other parents are starting to say their goodbyes, some of them already heading toward the door.

"Yeah?" Kenny says. He's kneeling on the floor by her desk, his arms folded on it and his chin resting on them. He doesn't see why the parents can't be here for the entire first day. It seems like it would be a perfectly healthy transition strategy.

"Um," she says, and she toys with the sleeve of his sweater. He wore a work-appropriate one today, though he hasn't really worked since Christine was born. He takes Clint up to the library sometimes to keep Tweek company and check up on things, but he's mostly retired, a stay at home dad. "Will you miss me?" Christine asks, whispering this and avoiding his eyes, tugging on the cuff of his sweater.

Kenny smiles, though he feels like he's been punched in the gut. In a good way, mostly; he just doesn't want to start crying. Kyle is sniffling audibly, his voice wavering as he tells Jacob to be respectful but not complacent.

"I'll miss you a lot," Kenny says, taking her hand. "Whenever we're apart, I always miss you. You know that, right?"

"Right," she says, smiling at him.

"But we'll see each other really soon," he says, leaning up to kiss her forehead. He needs to get out of here before he loses his composure. He didn't think he'd be overly upset by leaving her here at school, trusting her to other people, but that question ripped away his attempts to deny that this is actually very upsetting. _Will_ _you_ _miss_ _me_? It hits right at the center of him, in the scarred-over place where he stored his fears that no one missed him when he was gone, that this was why he was forgotten.

"I'll be here to pick you up at two thirty," Kenny says to Christine, realizing that he's going to have to pry Kyle away from poor Jacob before all the guys in class can make fun of him for having the crying gay dad. "Then me and Kyle are going to take you guys for ice cream, remember?" It's actually frozen yogurt, but they call it ice cream.

"I remember," Christine says, smiling and fidgeting happily at the thought.

"So think about what flavor you want," Kenny says, kissing her forehead again.

"I already know!" she says, and she blushes when she hears the volume of her voice. "Strawberry," she says, more quietly.

"Sounds like a plan," Kenny says. He manages to stand up, freaked out by the difficulty of doing so. Christine waves, and he waves back, taking Kyle's elbow with his free hand.

"You're gonna do great," Kyle is saying to Jacob, rapidly losing it. "Me and Daddy are so proud of you."

"But I haven't even done anything yet," Jacob says.

"C'mon, dude," Kenny says, pulling Kyle to his feet. "People are staring."

Outside on the sidewalk, Kyle blows his nose into a balled-up tissue that he pulled from the pocket of his suit coat. Kenny puts an arm around him, and they run into Henrietta, who is also sniffling and red-eyed. Kenny isn't sure why he's surprised by this, but she doesn't seem happy to be caught in this state. She looks at Kenny and shrugs.

"This is so fucking cliche," she says.

"I bet Clyde cried this morning," Kenny says. She rolls her eyes and blots at their corners with her sleeves, her makeup running.

"He totally did," she said. "It was pretty fucking farcical, this big guy in a police uniform blubbering over a five-year-old girl's lunch box. I don't know how he's going to work today." She sniffles. "I should call him."

"Wendy didn't cry," Kenny says. He elbows Kyle. "Did Stan?"

"No," Kyle says. "But I bet that's what he's been doing ever since me and Jacob left the house. Or, actually, I guess he's probably left for his shift by now." Kyle groans. "I have to see a patient in two hours. But I'm okay. I'm alright."

"I need a fucking cigarette," Henrietta says. "Have you got any?" she asks Kenny. He shakes his head.

"Sorry," he says.

"You always used to have them," she says, smearing more dark eye makeup across her cheeks.

"Not anymore," Kenny says. He worries sometimes that he'll end up in hell with no hostess present, but he's also pretty sure that the next time he goes there it will be for good, so lacking cigarettes will be the least of his problems. He's not sure that he's right about having given up his immortality, but he's more connected to this world than he ever was before, and even disappearing for a few days seems impossible, something that he just can't do anymore.

They get into Kyle's car, and Kyle sits there in the driver's seat for a while, sighing. Kenny can't shake the feeling that he should go back in there and at least stand outside the door or something, that he's allowing Christine to be vulnerable when he doesn't have to.

"You okay?" Kenny asks, reaching over to give Kyle's shoulder a shake.

"Yeah," Kyle says. "I feel old."

"Why, because it's not us in there, sitting at those desks?"

"Do you remember meeting me?" Kyle asks, turning to him. "In pre-school? I have some vague memories of you guys back then, but I don't remember, like, the seminal moment."

"Not even the moment you met Stan?"

"Oh, I remember _that_, but I didn't meet him in school. We met in a doctor's office."

"Yeah?" Kenny says, frowning, trying to remember why that seems familiar, because he definitely wasn't there. His parents didn't have health insurance, and they only went to the free clinic.

"Yeah," Kyle says, smiling. "I was so, so miserable. I was three, I guess, and they were still in the process of diagnosing my diabetes, so I was having all these tests done, _endless_ tests. I hated the doctor's office – I have such vivid memories of hating it, even way back then. I still hate going to the doctor, Jesus, and I am one now, sort of. But anyway, it was in the waiting room. Stan was there for an ear infection, and he was sitting on the floor playing with those giant baby Legos. I was in my mom's lap, and Stan looked up and smiled at me, and I squirmed until she'd let me go so I could play with him. This never happened, understand. My mother was amazed. I never trusted strangers, and usually I openly scorned other children."

"I can see that," Kenny says.

"So, yeah, our mothers got to talking, and they made a play date for us." Kyle shrugs. "The rest is history."

"That's funny," Kenny says. He smiles at the windshield, looking at the school. "But no, I don't remember a single moment when I met you guys. It just seemed like you'd always been there."

He thinks about that day at the garage, when Stan and Kyle showed up to introduce themselves, how Stan had awkwardly endured Kenny's hugs and Kyle had leapt away from them like a skittish bird.

"What?" Kyle says, reaching over to poke Kenny in the ribs.

"Hmm?"

"What are you smiling about?" Kyle asks.

"Nothing," Kenny says, because he supposes that's what it is now, those few days they spent together in another lifetime, and the years they spent apart, but he's glad that somebody remembers them, even if he's the only one on earth who does. "Let's get going, yeah? I gotta get home to Clint so Wendy can leave for work."

"I cannot believe you let her name him that," Kyle says, muttering, and he starts the car.

"I can't believe you brought disinfectant to the first day of kindergarten."

"Excuse me? You used some!"

"Yeah, but I didn't think to _bring_ it."

Kyle goes off on a rant about hygiene and Kenny half-listens, watching the town pass by as they drive toward home. It's mid-August, still warm, and Kenny doesn't feel old at all, even though he's got sixteen years' worth of memories on Kyle, if not physical years. Still being here in South Park, after everything, makes him feel close to that day thirty years ago – forty-six years ago? – when his mother dropped him off at kindergarten and peeled away from the curb, in a hurry to get home because she'd left Karen there alone. Kevin abandoned him immediately for his older friends, and Kenny was afraid that Stan and Kyle would have forgotten him over the summer, because they'd spent most of it at a day camp that Kenny's family couldn't afford. Butters and Cartman had been there with them, but not Kenny. He can't specifically recall meeting them, but he remembers that first day of kindergarten, walking in without a parent at his side, his hood pulled tightly around his face. He can't remember who caught his eye first, but he remembers both of them smiling at him and waving him over, and the enormous relief that washed over him: Stan and Kyle hadn't forgotten him at all.


	24. Chapter 24

A/N: Here's the last chapter of the story! Happy New Year, guys, and thank you so much to everyone who has read this story - I've spent a good chunk of six months working on this, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm almost ready to move on to my next big SP project, but there's still an epilogue after this. :)

* * *

><p>Butters is supposed to use the mechanic who's under contract with the station to fix his bike, but he always takes it to Kenny. Usually it's best if he doesn't mention these trips to Eric, so he goes early on the Thursday morning before the assembly, when he won't be expected at the station until after lunch. His bike is still running a little flat at idle when he parks in Kenny and Wendy's driveway, and he hopes it only needs a routine carburetor synchronization a little ahead of schedule. Kenny will know.<p>

"Is everything okay?" Wendy asks when she answers the door, and Butters is confused by the question before he remembers that he's in uniform and that it's not yet seven o'clock in the morning. He grins and nods, waving at Clinton, who is sitting on the stairs in his pajamas, pulling on a pair of bright green socks.

"I was just hoping Kenny could look at my bike before I go to work," Butters says, and Wendy nods, pulling him into the foyer by his elbow like he's one of her children. She doesn't look especially mom-like this morning, wearing a business suit with a flared skirt, her long hair pulled back into a neat pony tail.

"You and Clyde are doing that presentation at the elementary school today, aren't you?" Wendy says as Butters follows her into the kitchen. Kenny is there, taking a bottle of orange juice from Christine and returning it to the fridge.

"Yeah, we are," Butters says. "Will you be there?"

"No, I've got to go to the high school," Wendy says, her voice trailing off as she stares down at her phone, already distracted. Kenny walks over to clap Butters on the shoulder.

"Bike still running?" he asks.

"Well, sure," Butters says, a little offended. He might not know engines like Kenny does, but he takes good care of his bike. "It's out in the driveway. I think I just need the carbs synched, unless it's the spark plugs or something."

"I doubt it," Kenny says. "Plugs last forever in anything built after 1990. I'll take a look."

"Can I come?" Christine asks. She's eight years old now and shy around almost everyone but Butters. He nods and puts out his hand for her.

"Are you going to have a motorcycle someday?" he asks, and she laughs.

"Hell no," Kenny says from the sink, where he's rinsing cereal bowls.

"Hell no," Clinton repeats emphatically, grinning. He's a lot like Kenny was as a kid, devious and cute.

"Do not repeat that at pre-school," Wendy says, pointing her phone at Clinton. "And what are you doing in your pajamas? Honey, go get dressed."

"I need Daddy to help me," Clinton says, walking over to tug on Kenny's leg.

"Daddy has to fix Bubby's bike," Christine says. She's the one who started calling Butters that when she was little, and it stuck; even Kenny refers to him that way now, more often than not.

"You are old enough to dress yourself," Wendy says to Clinton, who whines. "Now hurry. I'm the superintendent of schools and my kids are developing a reputation for being late."

"You knew we'd all have reputations when you married a McCormick," Kenny says, smirking at her and hoisting Clinton up in his arms. "What if I carry you upstairs?" he says. "Then can you do the rest yourself?"

"Maybe," Clinton says, smiling agreeably.

"Kenny, don't indulge him," Wendy says, but she's looking at her phone again, both thumbs in motion.

"Christie, go take a look at Bubby's bike for me and diagnose the problem," Kenny says. "She inherited my mechanical genius," he says, winking at Butters.

"Do not let her touch that bike!" Wendy says as Butters and Christine walk toward the front door. "She'll get grease on her school clothes!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Butters calls back, and Christine smiles up at him.

"Mom lost twenty pounds," Christine says when they're outside, headed across the yard toward the driveway.

"I thought she looked kinda skinny," Butter says. "That's good for her, though, if she's getting healthy and all."

"It makes her in a bad mood, though," Christine says. "Sometimes."

"Yeah, I know how that is," Butters says, thinking of Eric. He's been put on a low cholesterol diet by his doctor, and Butters is forcing him to stick to it. He's starting to think that doing so might be the great challenge of his life, but he's determined to get Eric healthy, especially after what happened to his mom.

"I can't really fix your bike," Christine says when they're standing beside it. "Dad was just joking."

"I know," Butters says, patting her hair. "But maybe if you pay real close attention you could be a good mechanic like he is someday."

"I hope so," Christine says. She's worrying her hands together in a way that makes Butters think of himself as a child. Wendy is afraid that she's got some sort of anxiety disorder, but Kenny insists that she's only unprepared for the world at moments because of her sweetness. Butters thinks he's probably right, and with Kenny looking out for her, she'll find her way.

"How's school going?" Butters asks.

"It's okay," Christine says. "We're doing the state capitals."

"Can you name 'em all?"

"Most of them. I always forget the middle ones. Are you coming for the safety assembly?"

"Yep, me and Zelda's dad will be there," Butters says. "And Jacob's," he says, remembering that Stan will be with them again this year.

"How about Eric?" Christine asks, looking a little wary. Most kids are afraid of Eric because of his sheer size. It makes Butters sort of heartsick, because he thinks Eric would be real good with kids if he ever had the chance.

"He's got to work at the station," Butters says. "Keeping South Park safe and all that."

"Is Eric your boyfriend?" Christine asks, though she knows that he is. Butters nods.

"Yes, ma'am."

"How come?"

"Well," Butters says. "That's sort of a funny story."

Thankfully, Kenny emerges then, and Christine becomes more interested in her father's proficiency with motor vehicles than the reason that Butters is still with Eric after a number of years that he's never been sure how to count. He's not sure if he should start counting from the time when Eric woke him up with warm hands under his pajamas rather than pranks during sleepovers, or from the first time they kissed, on some random day after school when Butters dozed off in Eric's bed and woke to the feeling of Eric cupping his cheek. Eric had cupped a lot of things before then, but never his face, and when they kissed Butters at least knew that there was something unshakable at the center of whatever they were. Things didn't really solidify until Eric's mother died, when Butters moved into Eric's house to care for him and inadvertently came out to his parents in the process. He'd already been at odds with them for refusing to go away to college instead of staying in South Park with Eric and enlisting in the police academy. That might have been the first time Butters confidently thought of Eric as his boyfriend, or maybe it was after they graduated from the academy, when they got their tattoos.

"Looks like you were right," Kenny says after he's tinkered with the bike for a bit, Christine and Butters drawing on the driveway with some fat pieces of colored chalk while he works. "Carburetor needs to be synched. I've got all the equipment, I can do it here. Want me to change the oil while I'm at it?"

"If you have time," Butters says. "Won't Christine be late for school?"

"Nah," Kenny says. "I'm the fastest oil changer in the west." He looks up at his daughter to see if she's found this funny, and she gives him a charitable smile.

Wendy comes out the front door with Clinton, who is wearing a little fleece hat, though it's only the end of September and barely chilly. The McCormicks of Butters' generation are infamously overprotective of their children, quite in contrast to Kenny's parents.

"What are you doing?" Wendy asks.

"Changing the oil," Kenny says, and he wipes grease on his already dirty jeans.

"Christine, put the chalk away," Wendy says, and Butters feels a bit like he's being scolded, too. He stands and wipes pink chalk dust from the knees of his uniform. "Kenny, get out from under the bike, you're making her late."

"Done!" Kenny says, clapping his hands together triumphantly. "Check out how she rides now, dude."

Butters appreciates being called 'dude' instead of Bubby for a change, and he goes to his bike, grinning. Wendy gives Kenny an irritable look, but she lets him kiss her cheek as he takes Clinton from her, and she laughs when he kisses her neck. When Butters turns on his engine, the bike is running like new.

"Feels good!" he shouts over the noise of the engine, giving Kenny a thumbs up.

"Want to meet at the Village Inn for breakfast after I drop Christie off?" Kenny shouts back, and Butters nods. He puts on his helmet and waves to Wendy and the kids, feeling kind of impressive as he roars away, like the bad ass he always aspired to be, despite the fact that he's wearing dainty cotton panties under his uniform, per Eric's instruction. He figures the panties make him a bad ass, too, or at least a rebel.

The Village Inn is crowded with people getting a quick breakfast before work, but Butters is a beloved regular here, and the hostess gives him his favorite booth in back, efficiently evicting some teenagers who'd been loitering over coffee. Butters orders some for himself, and waits to order food until Kenny arrives. When he does, he's still wearing his grease-smeared jeans and a gray t-shirt that looks like it's been slept in.

"You need a hair cut, mister," Butters says when Kenny takes the seat across from him.

"Do I?" Kenny drags his hands through his hair, which is shaggy and covering the tops of his ears.

"Did you wash your hands after working on the bike?" Butters asks, concerned about the grimy appearance of Kenny's fingernails.

"Yes, Mom," Kenny says. He steals Butters' coffee mug and drinks from it. Butters wilts a little, though he knows Kenny meant that affectionately. Assembly Day is always kind of tough for him, and lately he even feels a little down any time Clyde's kids come for a visit at the station.

"Christine told me Wendy lost a bunch of weight," Butters says after they've both ordered the Lumberjack plate. Butters will trade his bacon for Kenny's toast, as always.

"Yeah, she's decided she needs to be a size four again," Kenny says. "It's this epic quest. I'm like, 'dude, you look great as is,' but my opinion is apparently moot. I think it's just part of her getting all sensitive about turning forty."

"That won't happen for three years!"

"That's what I said." Kenny shrugs. "She's thinking about it, though. And Kyle is her workout buddy, did Christie tell you that?"

"No," Butters says. He grins at the thought of Wendy and Kyle jogging together. "Has he lost twenty pounds, too? I just saw him last weekend and he looked the same as always."

"Who can tell? I don't ask, you know, it's sensitive. The whole thing makes me feel lazy, though. Do I look fat to you?"

"No," Butters says, annoyed by the question, his hand going to his stomach under the table. Kenny is effortlessly trim, which must drive Wendy crazy. Butters has been trying to adhere to Eric's new diet himself, in an effort to lose ten pounds, but when the Lumberjack plates arrive he eats his toast and Kenny's with extra butter.

"Excited about the assembly today?" Kenny asks while they're eating, showing Butters a mouth full of bright yellow eggs. Butters nods.

"I guess so," he says. "It's fun, seeing all the kids."

"Still don't want to pop the question to Cartman?"

"What, marriage?" Butters asks miserably, aware that that's not what Kenny is really talking about. Kenny rolls his eyes.

"Please," he says. "You two were married in junior high. I mean kids. You still - you've never -?"

"Aw, Kenny, geez," Butters says. "I don't want to start a fight I won't win. And anyway, I barely think about it anymore. We're both so busy all the time-"

"You know what I think?" Kenny says, pointing to Butters with a piece of bacon. Butters frowns.

"What?"

"I think he gets off on being your kid. He's never wanted your attention directed away from him."

"Kenny," Butters says, sighing. "He's not like that anymore. He's grown up a lot, you'd be surprised."

Kenny snorts. "Yeah, I would, considering I see him all the time and he hasn't changed at all."

"You see him all the time?" Butters cocks an eyebrow.

"Well, whenever he's hanging around you, yeah!"

"That's different. That's just you - he was always jealous of you. He acts like his old self just to tick you off."

"Bullshit," Kenny says, muttering. "He's the same around Stan and Kyle."

"Only 'cause Kyle always gets him going!"

"Alright, alright," Kenny says, slashing a hand through the air over his plate. "I guess after twenty-five years I can stop trying to talk sense into you. It's just - you're so good with my kids, and Jacob, and-"

"How are you measuring that?" Butters asks, ready to change the subject. He picks up his coffee cup and props both elbows on the table. "Twenty-five years, where do you get that number?"

Kenny shrugs. "Kyle's bar mitzvah," he says. "That's when I finally accepted it was inevitable. We got high and you fell asleep in Cartman's lap. Everyone else went home, and I kept a close watch on you guys, 'cause I thought he'd wake up hungover and act like a dick to you, like, to save face or whatever, but he just rubbed his eyes and yelled at me for letting you sleep long enough to get in trouble."

"I got grounded," Butters says, looking out the window. When he thinks about his childhood he mostly remembers being locked in his bedroom, alone, with nothing to play with, because if he had his toys he wasn't being punished properly. It was probably why he was such an early bloomer, sex-wise. He had nothing to play with but himself. Eric certainly helped him along in this area, too, and _Backdoor_ _Sluts_ _9_ was also contributory.

"Talk to your mom recently?" Kenny asks, sawing into a gravy-covered biscuit.

"A few weeks back," Butters says, nodding. "On my birthday. That's the only time she calls, really, except sometimes on Christmas."

"Hey, speaking of estranged family," Kenny says, and Butters is glad that he knows now to leave the subject of his father closed; they have that in common. "I finally met my half-brother last week."

"You did? How was he?"

"Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a pretty nice guy. He came by the library looking for me and Tweek wouldn't give him my number, 'cause he thought - well - 'cause he's Tweek, but he left his number and I called him. We had lunch. My dad died, apparently."

"Oh, Kenny!" Butters puts down his coffee cup and reaches across the table to touch Kenny's wrist. "You didn't tell me!"

"Yeah, well," Kenny says, keeping his eyes on his plate. "It's kind of irrelevant. That's why my brother was looking for me. Mark, that's his name."

"Mark McCormick?"

"No, Mark Yeargin. My old man never married his mother. He wasn't living with them when he, ah. Anyway, liver failure, cash in your bets."

"Kenny." Butters squeezes Kenny's wrist, and Kenny finally looks up at him. "I'm so sorry."

"Thanks," Kenny says. "I didn't go to the funeral."

"Oh, well. I don't blame you."

"You know, I wonder if that's why Cartman doesn't want kids," Kenny says, picking up his coffee cup. Butters raises his eyebrows, confused.

"Huh?"

"The fatherless thing," Kenny says. "I worried about that when Wendy was pregnant. How the hell was I going to be a father when mine was never worth a shit for me? You think Cartman worries about that?"

"Ah - I don't know," Butters says. He's flushing, caught off guard. The truth is, Butters has no idea why Eric doesn't want children, and he isn't even sure that Eric doesn't feel a lonely pang the way that Butters does when Clyde puts his policeman hat on one of his little daughters at the station. Butters has never had the nerve to bring it up at all, and Eric certainly hasn't.

"Anyway, something to think about," Kenny says, eating cold eggs off of Butters' plate. "You're done, right?"

"Wah - yeah."

They talk about less impacting things for another twenty minutes or so, until Kenny says he has to get home and shower before going to the library to help Tweek with some of the day to day tasks. Kenny doesn't need to work; Eric claims that Kenny and Wendy are disgustingly wealthy from doing well with stocks back when such a thing was possible, and if it's true they hide it well. Kenny says he goes to the library to keep himself out of trouble, but Butters thinks he likes to check up on Tweek, because Kenny's feelings about Craig Tucker are similar to his feelings about Eric. If Kenny has one major failing it's that he's always showing up to put out fires that aren't actually burning, but Butters takes it in stride at this point. He means well.

"What should we do for Stan's birthday next month?" Kenny asks as they're walking out to Butters' bike. "Vegas?"

"Maybe for his fortieth," Butters says.

"Or yours," Kenny says, poking him in the chest. "You'll turn forty before any of us."

"Thanks for reminding me," Butters says, though he's not especially sensitive about his age. He's always liked the idea that, while Eric might be twice his size and far louder, he's also the younger one, and the one who needs more taking care of.

"Fine, well, we'll probably just do the usual cookout at our house," Kenny says. "If it's not too cold that weekend."

"Sounds good," Butters says, though he's still a little tender after their conversation, and he imagines yet another get together where everyone else has kids to keep an eye on and Butters is preoccupied with making sure Eric's feelings don't get too hurt by Kenny or Kyle.

"Say hi to Christie when you see her at the assembly," Kenny says. "And to Stan. Ask him what he thinks about Vegas. He might be into it."

"Sure," Butters says, though it's ridiculous, because he knows that, like him, Stan and Kyle can't afford to pick up and go to Vegas on a moment's notice, even if Wendy would agree to watch Jacob and the other kids while they were gone, which she wouldn't.

He drives to the elementary school, where he and Clyde will give a safety presentation in a hour, followed by Stan's advice about avoiding the sort of injuries that he's often called upon to treat, and finally some pediatrician who will talk about eating right. Butters loved these sorts of assemblies when he was young, especially after he was somewhat accepted by Eric's gang, and he could sit there giggling under his breath while Kyle and Eric made nasty comments about whoever was presenting. He hopes the kids won't make any nasty comments about him today, though he knows it's likely, at least among the fourth and fifth graders.

There's a security guard posted near the door of the school, and Butters exchanges the usual awkward nod with him, glad that Eric isn't here to gloat about who's a real cop and who isn't. Eric at least does so silently these days, but it's still fairly obvious when he struts past uniformed mall guards. Butters goes to Ike's office, afraid to disturb Craig, or maybe just afraid of Craig, generally.

"Hey," Ike says, his eyes slipping from his computer screen when Butters appears in his open doorway, knocking against the frame for good measure. "It's the 5-0. What have I done now?"

"Today's the assembly," Butters says, not sure if Ike is joking or if he's actually forgotten. Based on the questioning look on his face, he has. "The health and safety assembly?"

"Oh, shit, that's today?" Ike sits up straight in his chair, his feet dropping down off his desk. He pats his chest as if he's looking for a pen in his pocket, though he's wearing a knit sweater. "What did I forget to do?"

"Nothing," Craig says flatly, appearing in the doorway behind Butters and making him jump. "I've taken care of all the arrangements." He flattens the back of his hand against Butters' shoulder to push him out of the way, walking into Ike's office and slapping a manila folder onto his messy desk. "As usual."

"Dude, I had to put up the decorations on the third grade hall," Ike says.

"You don't have to personally decorate for _autumn_, Broflovski," Craig says. "The teachers can do that."

"The teachers are busy, man," Ike says, flipping through the manila folder. "What am I looking at here?"

"What you're looking at, you imbecile, is the budget for the holiday pageant. I need you to review and sign."

"Holiday pageant?" Ike tips back in his chair to do a fully body stretch as he says so, his face contorting. "But it's only, like." He thinks for a moment, his shoulders slumping, post-stretch. "Autumn."

"It's September," Craig says. "Try to keep that in mind." He turns to look at Butters. "What is he doing with this job?" Craig asks, gesturing to Ike. "Testaburger allows him to languish here just to torment me. I should complain to the state."

"Oh, Craig," Ike says, rather fondly, and he stands. "Wendy understands that you need me, that's all."

"_I _need _you_? That's rich. For what? Do I actually require an assistant who steals confiscated toys out of my drawers and returns them to the perpetrators?"

"That was one time," Ike says, stretching again, like he's just woken from a nap, which is possible. "And I'm not your assistant, fucker." Ike looks at Butters. "Wouldn't you return a toy flashlight to a kid who has documented achluophobia?"

"Um," Butters says, and he's relieved when he sees Clyde entering the main office behind him. Clyde looks nervous. He doesn't like public speaking, and only volunteers for the assembly because his daughters are still young enough to be proud instead of embarrassed when their dad shows up in a police uniform.

"Am I late?" Clyde asks.

"No," Butters says. "I'm early, and Stan still isn't here."

"Oh, good," Clyde gives Craig a cautious look. "Hey, dude," he says. "What's up?"

"The residents of this town, and particularly the children, continue to conspire against me," Craig says. "That's what's up, Donovan. Remind me why I still live here?"

"Because Tweek does?" Clyde says.

"Ah, right." Craig stiffens a little, giving Ike a look like he expects him to make some joke, but Ike just smiles. "How's your wife?" Craig asks, his gaze sliding back to Clyde.

"Henry's fine," Clyde says. "She got this home decor shop in downtown Denver to buy a bunch of her candles, so that was good."

"I have to commend you, actually," Craig says. "And her, I suppose. Your children are extremely well behaved. You must know how to discipline them. Unlike some people," he says, looking at Ike.

"Hey, now," Ike says. "Sydney is a model citizen."

"Your namesake more than makes up for it," Craig says.

"Has Issac been in trouble?" Butters asks. He's the oldest of Ike and Bebe's three children, already in second grade though he's only six years old. He's a certified genius, like Ike, and it's been suggested that he should go to a school full of them in Denver, but Issac refuses to leave his cousin Jacob's side, and instead spends his time finding ways to circumvent the standard curriculum.

"Has Issac been in trouble?" Craig says, rounding on Butters. "Has Issac been in trouble? When isn't Issac Broflovski in trouble? His father has set him on a quest to drive me out of my mind."

"Oh, c'mon," Ike says. "I told you I can handle him. He listens to me."

"That's precisely the problem!" Craig says. He's starting to lose his composure and seems to notice this, his eyelids lowering slightly over his pale gray eyes. "At any rate," he says. "Donovan, _your_ parenting skills are obviously excellent."

"Thanks," Clyde says, blushing. "Henry's the one who keeps them in line, though. Anyway, um. How's Tweek?"

"Tweek is marvelous," Craig says. "I envy his job, most days."

"So why don't you go work at the library?" Butters asks.

"Because he makes seven dollars an hour," Craig says. "Frankly."

"Dude, you couldn't leave, anyway," Ike says, tugging on Craig's arm until Craig yanks out of his grip. "We need you here. This place would fall apart without you."

"Like that's news to me," Craig says, but he looks rather pleased with himself. "Anyway, I do enjoy my job, and I plan to be here in the halcyon days when all Broflovskis have passed out of the system in one way or another."

"That'll never happen," Ike says. "Hell, me and Bebe are just getting started. I want at least five before all is said and done."

Craig looks at the ceiling. "Comment about heterosexuals withheld," he says, muttering. He looks at Butters as if expecting him to commiserate. Butters smiles queasily and raises his shoulders. They hear someone coming in and everyone turns to see Stan in his paramedic's uniform, looking slightly breathless and harried, as usual. It's quite a contrast to his off-shift persona. He can barely make it to nine o'clock at any party without falling asleep on Kyle's shoulder while Kyle talks about some fellow child psychologist who he almost came to blows with at a conference.

"Sorry I'm late," Stan says, hurrying to them. "There was an accident on the freeway by the gas station, I had to find a severed thumb and put it on ice-"

"Was it anyone we know?" Craig asks, going tense. Stan shakes his head.

"Some guy passing through, he-"

"Then spare us the details, please," Craig says. "And you're not late."

"Oh." Stan looks vaguely confused, as if he just woke from a dream and found himself in the middle of this room. "Do I have time to see Jacob before the thing starts then?"

"No, Stanley, you will not be disrupting your son's class time today," Craig says. "Come along, all three of you. I'll get you set up in the auditorium."

"Do I have to come?" Ike asks.

"I'd rather you didn't," Craig says.

"Goody," Ike says, and he returns to his computer as they're leaving.

Butters follows the other down the familiar old hallways, thinking about a story Kyle told him last Thanksgiving when they were both a little drunk. He said that a couple of fifth graders had gotten caught writing PRINCIPAL TUCKER IS AN ASS FUCKER on a stall in the boy's bathroom, and that they were two who had appealed to Ike and been granted mercies in the past. Ike was instrumental in having them expelled under some sort of hate speech rule. He said he did it for Kyle, and because it was the right thing anyway, but Kyle thinks that he secretly respects Craig and wants to be the only one allowed to give him a hard time.

"Did you know that Kenny's father died?" Butters asks Stan when Clyde is going over the script for the assembly with Craig. Stan's eyes go wide.

"Whoa," he says. "What? When?"

"I don't know exactly," Butters says, and he has to stop himself from rubbing his fists together. "Kenny was kinda weird about it. Understandably."

"Yeah, understandably," Stan says, pushing his hair off his forehead. He could use a hair cut, too, though Butters is pretty sure Kyle likes him to keep his bangs on the long side like he did when they were kids. "When did he tell you this?" Stan asks.

"At breakfast this morning," Butters says. "I don't know if he wants me blabbing it around, but he didn't tell me not to say anything. I just thought you should know."

"Yeah, thanks for telling me." Stan squeezes Butters' shoulder, staring into space. "What was the cause?"

"Um, liver failure."

"Shit, of course." Stan shakes his head. "Did Kenny seem okay?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. He was the same as always, giving me grief about Eric and stealing my bacon."

"Fuck," Stan says. "Should we, like. Send him a card or something?"

"I don't think so," Butters says, wrinkling his nose a little. "Maybe we could take him out, though, with just the guys. He was talking about going to Las Vegas."

"Jesus," Stan says. He rolls his eyes. "Tell him we're not all semi-retired."

"He meant for your birthday," Butters says. "But yeah, I can't go to Las Vegas next month."

"Like Wendy would even let him go," Stan says. "Alright, well, shit. I'll tell Kyle."

Butters smiles, because it's funny that Stan thinks he needs to say so out loud. Everyone who knows them assumes that they tell each other everything.

The kids start to file in soon after that, kindergarteners first. Clyde's youngest daughter is in kindergarten this year, and her teacher lets her out of the single file line to hug her father. Butters still thinks the name Mercury Donovan sounds like a car dealership, but Mercury isn't shy like her older sister, and she seems to be weathering the name well so far. Clyde has a son now, too, a baby named Cloud who is home with Henrietta, presumably overseeing her candle-making. She claims that her candles are imbued with spells, and Eric scoffs at this, but he and Butters did have pretty excellent sex one night last year when they burned the aphrodisiac candle Henrietta gave them for Christmas. When Butters pointed this out, Eric dismissed it by saying that they always have pretty excellent sex, which is true.

The rest of the kids come in, fifth graders last and loudest. Butters spots Christine among the third graders and waves. She's with Zelda as usual, and Butters gets the sense that Zelda is right on the cusp of beginning to find her father's appearances at these things embarrassing. She's pulling her dark blond hair across her lips, her shoulders hunched while she listens to something Christine says.

"You two ready?" Craig asks Butters and Clyde. They always go first. Butters nods. Clyde looks a bit seasick. A few rambunctious fifth graders can be counted on to cough out the word 'pig' a few times, but Butters tries not to let it get to him.

The presentation goes smoothly enough, with a few jokes that are starting to get stale after three years of doing this, but the kindergarteners and first graders laugh hard, and the advice about not getting into cars with strangers and such is mostly for them. For the fifth graders, there are cautionary tales about legal punishments for minors caught with drugs and alcohol. Butters is relieved when their segment is over and Stan takes the stage. Stan is much more personable, though also kind of an awkward speaker, at least at first. He tells horror stories about household accidents that make the kids squirm and laugh, because Stan makes the stories memorable but harmless, with happy endings that may or may not be real. He's reaching the end of his routine when Butters notices a pack of fourth grade boys who are whispering and laughing into their hands in a troubling way. In sixteen years with the South Park Police Department, Butters has become an expert in recognizing juvenile delinquents, especially when they're plotting something. One of them raises his hand, though Stan didn't ask for audience questions. He's a scrawny boy who was probably put up to this by the others. Butters thinks of himself back in school and actually feels bad for the kid.

"You have a question?" Stan says, pointing to him. The kid stands up, looking nervous. The other boys are shaking with laughter, doing a bad job of hiding it behind their hands.

"Um, yeah," the scrawny boy says. "Uhh. Are you, like. Gay?"

Nervous laughter spreads outward from the group of instigators, and Butters glances at Craig, who looks ready to do murder.

"Yeah," Stan says, which produces more nervous giggling. "Are you?" he asks, and almost every kid in the auditorium explodes into laughter. The scrawny kid sits down fast, his friends falling onto each other in hilarity. Stan grins. "I mean, it's cool if you aren't," he says, and this makes everybody laugh again. Ike is cracking up over at his post near the doors. Craig still looks furious.

The audience is rowdy for the pediatrician, a smallish, older man, and Craig has to step in twice to threaten everybody into silence.

"Sorry about that," Stan says when Craig returns after his second warning to the student body about the possible loss of pizza day if they don't simmer down. "About that 'are you' thing," Stan says. "That was, uh, unprofessional."

Craig shrugs. "I'm all in favor of volleying their pathetic insults back at them," he says. "Your ex-girlfriend might have words with me about this, however, if the parents should become involved. Or she might just have words with you."

"Dude, don't call Wendy my ex-girlfriend," Stan says. "We dated when we were like, five."

"No, that was you and Kyle," Craig says. "You and Wendy were eight or so."

"Whatever, just make sure those kids don't try to beat Jacob up over this," Stan says, looking worried.

"I'll put Ike on that particular task," Craig says. "It will behoove him to have something to do around here that he can actually be passionate about, now that he's finished taping construction paper leaves up in the hallways."

"That would probably behoove Ike, yeah," Stan says, and Butters smiles when Stan shoots him a look.

When the assembly is over, they reconvene in the principal's office, Ike still laughing and congratulating Stan on his comment. Stan is becoming increasingly sure that he shouldn't have said it.

"You think Wendy will get pissed at me?" he asks Ike.

"Dude, why are you still afraid of her?" Ike asks, laughing harder.

"Um, because she's kind of scary?"

"Not as scary as my brother," Ike says.

"Oh, shit, you think Kyle will find out about this?"

Tweek appears in the doorway before Ike can answer. He's holding a brown paper bag and looking underfed and nervous as usual.

"Ah, my lunch," Craig says, beckoning Tweek inside. "Is Kenny watching the library?"

"Yes!" Tweek says. "I didn't leave it unattended!"

"Well, alright. Gentlemen," Craig says, taking the bag from Tweek and looking around at Clyde, Butters, Stan, and Ike. "Get out."

They leave, and Ike shuts the door behind him, shaking his head.

"You guys might want to go," he says. "They fuck on his desk like, every afternoon. And I only have one pair of headphones."

"Jesus," Stan says, grabbing Clyde by the elbow. "Make haste."

Butters laughs nervously as he follows them out, wondering if Clyde would say the same thing to somebody who visited the station. Eric has a thing for desk sex, and Butters has a thing for sex in Eric's desk chair. Butters tries to be quiet, but Eric usually doesn't bother.

Outside, it's a clear, pretty fall day, and leaving the elementary school with his friends makes Butters feel like he's still young enough to suggest that they go down to Stark's Pond and sit around with their school books in their laps, pretending to work on homework but mostly just shooting the shit and watching birds. It was the kind of thing that was best if he went with just Clyde and Stan, because if Kyle came along he would bark at them for not concentrating, and if Eric was there they were more likely to end up trying to put out a potential forest fire than watch birds.

"You guys remember when we used to go to Stark's Pond after school?" Stan asks, and Butters grins.

"I was just thinking about that," he says.

"That sounds better than going back to the station and finishing traffic violation paperwork," Clyde says. "Too bad we can't cut."

"Yeah, I need to get back, too," Stan says, glancing at his watch. "I used to have this whole system, though, did you guys ever notice that?"

"System for what?" Butters asks.

"For when I'd invite you guys to go up there with me. 'Cause Wednesdays were Kyle's. We used to kiss on Wednesdays."

"Only on Wednesdays?" Clyde says. "Everybody thought you guys fooled around nonstop when we weren't there."

"Not at first," Stan says. "At first there were _rules_."

"That's cute," Butters says, and he means it. "Me and Eric never had rules."

"Oh, God," Clyde says, wincing. "Don't tell me. You're talking about my boss."

"You're talking about _Cartman_," Stan says. He stops walking and frowns. "Was he always nice to you? I worried sometimes."

"No, he wasn't," Butters says, and Clyde laughs, maybe because of his cheerful tone. "But I would put my foot down if he wasn't, at least when we got older." He'd withhold sex, mostly. "Then he'd be nice."

Butters says goodbye to both of them, though he'll see Clyde again in ten minutes, at the station. He gets on his bike and spends the drive to station thinking about what it would be like to go to Vegas with those guys for his fortieth birthday. He's grinning to himself by the time he arrives, and he thinks maybe they shouldn't wait until he's forty to do it. They could go for Kyle's thirty-eighth in May if they start planning now, or Eric's in July.

The station is quiet when Butters arrives, and he says hello to the few officers who are hanging around as he makes his way toward Eric's office. He opens Eric's office door without knocking. As he suspected when he decided to show up an hour early for his shift, he catches Eric cheating, red-handed.

"Eric!" Butters says, closing the door behind him. "What are you doing?"

"What the hell does it look like?" Eric asks. His mouth is full, and he's got sauce on his chin. "I'm eating a goddamn sandwich."

"A sandwich?" Butters walks to him, annoyed, though the sandwich smells delicious and he's starving, despite the big breakfast. "Is that a sandwich, or is that a Philly cheese steak with extra provolone, cooked on a greasy stove top at Gyro World?"

"Both," Eric says, and he takes another bite, defiantly.

"Fries, too?" Butters says, sighing. He sits in Eric's lap and drags a particularly salty fry through ketchup before eating it.

"You can't nag me for eating fries if you're going to eat them, too," Eric says, and he moans angrily when Butters helps himself to a bite of the sandwich as well.

"I don't have high cholesterol, Eric!" Butters says after he's swallowed.

"I've been eating like a fucking bird all week!" Eric says. It's not true, though Butters has been making an effort to curb Eric's portions and cook healthier meals. "Give me a break, Jesus."

"Fine, but I'm making baked chicken for you tonight to make up for this," Butters says. "With something green on the side."

"Tonight is macaroni casserole night!" Eric seems truly distressed, but Butters must be firm here.

"It was going to be macaroni casserole night, but you can't have two treats in one day!"

Before Eric can protest further, Butters shuts him up by kissing him, tasting cola, salt, and cheese: all of Eric's favorite things. They're Butters' favorites, too, and he's developed a dangerous appetite himself after so many years of living with Eric. He pulls back to kiss Eric's cheeks, and grabs a napkin to wipe the sauce from his chin.

"How was the thing?" Eric asks, his arm sliding around Butters' waist.

"Fine," Butters says. "Stan emasculated a nine-year-old."

"Sounds like Stan," Eric says. "Clyde didn't do anything to embarrass the police force?"

"No, Eric, he did a good job. Don't be so hard on old Clyde."

"Butters, he's married to a witch and his son's name is _Cloud_. What do you want from me?"

Butters should scold him for that, but he laughs and rests his head on Eric's shoulder, tracing the outline of Eric's badge with his finger. He's always been impressed by the sight of Eric in uniform, even though his own is identical, just smaller.

"The kids were pretty rowdy today," Butters says. "The older ones, anyway."

"Just fire a few warning shots into the air next time. That'll settle them down real quick."

"Oh, sure," Butters says, and he sighs. "You know, if I ever had a kid," he says, and he regrets it as soon as it's out, his cheeks burning, but there's no going back now. It helps that he's not looking Eric in the eye. "I wouldn't be as strict as my parents were," he says, hoping he sounds casual, and that Eric is too absorbed in his sandwich to notice Butters' elevated heart rate. "I'd make them keep their rooms neat and stuff, and be nice to their elders, but that's about it."

"Fuck that," Eric says. "No kid of mine would have to clean shit. That's what maids are for. And most elders aren't worth respecting."

"So you'd just let your kids get away with murder?" Butters asks, lifting his head.

"Not literal murder," Eric says with a shrug. "And I'd lay down the law if they got on my nerves. But being a kid is about, you know. Doing whatever the fuck you want."

So is being an adult, according to Eric, but Butters doesn't say that. He watches Eric until he finally looks up from his sandwich, running his tongue over his teeth.

"What?" Eric says. Butters can feel Eric's heart pounding against his shoulder. Maybe just from too much salt and soda.

"I guess it's irrelevant," Butters says, and as soon as the first syllable of _irrelevant_ is out, his voice becomes unreliable and his eyes start to burn. "We can't, I mean. We don't have sisters like Stan and Kyle do. To help with the girl parts."

"Are you fucking kidding?" Eric laughs and puts what's left of the sandwich down on his desk. "Butters, my father was a professional athlete. You seriously think I'm his only illegitimate child?"

"Wha -?" Butters' voice is steady, because suddenly he's more confused than emotional. "You have siblings? Since when, I mean - how do you know?"

"I looked into it," Eric says. His face is getting red now, too, and he busies himself with his soda, sucking the last of it up loudly.

"Looked into it?" Butters says. "When? Why?"

"'Cause, I don't know! I guess I wanted to know if, like. I mean, after my mom died. Um. But yeah, there's two who are girls, and they're poor as shit, as far as I can tell. So at least one of them would probably, you know." He looks up at Butters, cheeks blazing now.

"One of them would probably what?" Butters asks. He's too stunned to do anything but pet Eric's cheek, trying to calm him, because he's trembling, shaking the whole chair.

"Have our kid," Eric says. "If you, like. Actually ever. Wanted that."

"Do you?" Butters asks, shifting to straddle Eric's lap. He's shaking now, too, because Eric is answering mostly with his eyes, and Butters never would have guessed that Eric actually wants this _more_ than he does. Because Butters wants it pretty bad.

"I mean," Eric says, and he looks away, wetting his lips, clearing his throat. "If you do."

"Why didn't you ever say anything?" Butters asks.

"Jesus, I don't know! Why didn't you?"

"I was afraid you wouldn't want it," Butters says. He's going to lose his composure soon, but he's not sure if the nervous energy that's gathering in his chest and working its way up his throat will come out as sobs or giddy laughter. "I was afraid I'd get my heart broke if I brought it up."

"Well, there you have it," Eric says, muttering, and Butters kisses him hard, pouring all his nervous energy into it. Eric's arms wind around his waist, and his hands slide up Butters' back, the chair tilting and whining under their combined weight. Butters has a thousand things he wants to say, mostly questions about how and when and what these half-sisters are like, if Eric even knows, but all he can say is Eric's name, and he sighs it into Eric's mouth in broken syllables, his hands cupped around Eric's cheeks. They're still hot, but Eric is grinning now, his hands sliding back down to squeeze Butters' ass.

"I'll tell you one thing," Eric says. "Our kid would be able to kick Cloud Donovan's ass."

Butters laughs. "What if it's a girl?"

"It'd still be no contest."

They spend the rest of Eric's lunch hour kissing and speculating about what sort of kid a combination of their genes would produce. Eric is concerned about his recessive ginger gene, though he insists his father was really more of a daywalker than a ginger, and the fact that he was good enough at football to play for the Broncos more than makes up of the threat of their kid having Kyle Broflovski-esque hair.

"I wonder what my mom would say," Butters says. "If she found out we'd had a baby."

Eric scoffs. "She'd say 'please forgive me so I can attempt to exercise some control over your kid.' And I'd be like, 'ey, bitch, back the fuck off.'"

"Oh, Eric," Butters says, though for the most part he agrees. He tries to imagine his father finding out he had a grandchild, but can't envision his response. "Maybe we shouldn't get our hopes up," Butters says, his eyes getting wet again. "I mean, we don't know that either of your half-sisters would be willing, or if they're still young enough-"

"They are and they would be," Eric says, heat coloring his cheeks again. "I've, uh. I've talked to them about it. The younger one lives in Boulder, and she's got hair like mine. Doesn't mean she's not a recessive ginger carrier, but-"

"Eric, why did you keep this from me?" Butters asks, though he's not really angry, just surprised. Whenever Eric has wanted something, he's asked for it without hesitation, whether it's bacon wrapped steak for breakfast or Butters in hot pants and a pink wig. He knows, too, that Butters will happily indulge him, nine times out of ten.

"Jesus, I don't know," Eric says. "It's just, like." He looks down at Butters' throat, shrugging liberally. "I know everyone thinks I'd suck at it. Fuck them, but, uh. I thought you might. Think that."

"I'm afraid sometimes, too," Butters says, tipping Eric's chin up until their eyes meet. "I mean, gosh, look at how my parents were! But we're different, me and you. We're good together. That's important. And I think you'd be great," he says, lowering his lips over Eric's as he says so. "I've always thought that."

"How come?" Eric mumbles, just before Butters can really start kissing him.

"'Cause you take care of me," Butters says. Eric gives him a skeptical look, because they both know it's more often the other way around. He lets Butters kiss him. It's rare that Eric doesn't try to dominate the kiss or turn it into something dirtier, but now is one of those times, at least for a few long minutes, Eric's head tipped back against his chair.

"You need taking care of?" Eric asks, squeezing Butters' ass again. "On the desk?"

"On the chair," Butters says. He's already half-hard just from sitting like this, his legs spread around Eric's body and hanging down around the back of the chair. "You have to be quiet, though," Butters says, whispering already.

"I don't care if everybody out there knows I'm fucking you," Eric says, as if this is news to Butters.

"I know," Butters says. "But - for practice. For how we'd have to be at home."

Eric stares up at him for a moment, letting this sink in. Their lives would be totally different. No more weeknights out at Hammerheads with Craig and Tweek, or sex toys left carelessly strewn about the bedroom, and they wouldn't be able to work their shifts together or jet off to Vegas.

"I hope our kid looks like you," Eric says.

"How come?" Butters asks. He's always considered Eric the more handsome of the two of them, and Liane had been so beautiful. Eric raises his eyebrows as if that was a stupid question.

"This is gonna shock the fuck out of you," he says. "But I like the way you look."

Butters laughs, and he laughs harder when Eric bites and licks at his neck, attacking his ticklish places. Maybe it was a stupid question, after almost thirty years of being together in some form or fashion, but it's still nice to hear.

After work, Butters rides home with Eric in his cruiser, leaving his bike in the station's lot. They stop at the grocery store to get chicken breasts and salad, and Butters is even successful in persuading Eric to buy light beer. At home, Eric showers while Butters starts dinner, and he resists the temptation to call Kenny and gush about this good news on the possible baby-having front. He wants it to be his secret with Eric for a while. Eventually, he'll have to grill Stan and Kyle on all the pertinent details, legal and emotional and everything in between, and he knows they'll be helpful as heck, because they always have been. Kyle and Eric still fight like cats in a bag, but when Liane died Kyle came home for the funeral, alone, all the way from New York. Virginia Tech was playing in some bowl game that weekend, so Stan wasn't able to come with him, and it was weird to see Kyle without him, especially in support of Eric, but not exactly surprising. Kyle even stayed to help Butters clean up after the reception.

"Who would the godfather be?" Butters asks when they're in bed together after dinner, lying in the dark, neither of them able to sleep.

"Not Kenny," Eric says.

"Aw, Eric, why not? He'd be-"

"No, Butters! McCormick and Testaburger are not raising any offspring of mine in case of emergency. And don't even think about saying Stan, either. Kyle would have our kid speaking Hebrew before there was grass growing over our graves."

"Eric!" Butters says, wrinkling his nose, but he's laughing. "Um, okay, but not Craig and Tweek. They don't like kids."

"Jesus, of course not! Why would you even suggest them?"

"Well, who does that leave?" Butters asks, thumping Eric's chest with his hand. "Clyde and Henrietta?"

"Fuck no! I'll leave my kids to Clyde _Frog_ before I let Donovan's wife turn them into pussy wizards."

"Pussy wizards?"

"Pussies," Eric says. "And wizards, respectively. You know it would happen. And they'd probably change the kids' names to, like, Onyx and Fartwinkle or something."

"Who then?" Butters asks. He climbs on top of Eric and props himself up so that their noses touch, waiting for an answer.

"Well, Token is rich," Eric says.

"We're not even friends with Token! I haven't seen him since Clyde's birthday."

"I guess we'd better just not die then," Eric says. "It's the only option."

"Oh, fine." Butters drops down onto Eric and hides his face against Eric's neck, secretly resolving to make Stan and Kyle the godparents. He'll figure out a way to talk Eric into it eventually. It's very possible that the idea that Eric could refer to Kyle as the godmother rather than the godfather would win him over.

Butters falls asleep like that, still on top of Eric, finally soothed into restfulness by the rise and fall of Eric's stomach underneath his own. It's usually the deepest sleep he has, draped over Eric as if he's a mattress made for him, but Butters has bad dreams, maybe because of their talk about who would take care of their hypothetical children if they died. He has a nightmare about Eric dying in what seems like a dreary hotel ballroom, surrounded by sheet-covered antique furniture, and he wakes up afraid, clutching at Eric's shoulders. Eric grunts and rolls over until Butters is spooned against him, but even that isn't enough. Butters sits up with alarm, not sure what he's looking for in their dark bedroom. Some sort of intruder, maybe, the kind of thing that could evade their security system.

He surveys the room, returning to reality as his eyes adjust. There's the tall antique dresser that Kenny helped him refinish, and the half-burned aphrodisiac candle resting atop it, among the rest of their daily debris. The first aid kit Stan critiqued and replenished last time he was over is still sitting in the arm chair by the window, though the scrape Eric sustained during a knife fight with a drunk he had to arrest three months back is mostly healed, just a faint scar remaining over his left shoulder. Clyde Frog is on the chair, too, in his usual spot. Kyle helped Butters stitch him up after Eric's mini-meltdown when they were kids. Butters had been shocked, initially, that Kyle would volunteer, and then not so much. Kyle likes giving officious advice about doing things properly, and he seemed as disturbed by Eric's attempt to eulogize the softer parts of himself as Butters had been.

Before he can sleep again, Butters pushes his hand up under Eric's t-shirt, pressing his fingers over his heartbeat. He can't really feel the tattoo there, Butters' badge number inked right over Eric's heart, but he knows it's there without having to look, and he smiles in the dark, touching Eric's badge number with his other hand. It's just over Butters' left hip bone. They had a deal that they could pick where to tattoo each other's badge numbers after they graduated. Back then, Butters was still nervous about what Eric really wanted from him, but when he consented to having Butters' badge number over his heart, what Eric wanted seemed clear enough.

Butters leaves his hand pressed over Eric's heartbeat as he slips back into sleep. He's comforted, any panic a nightmare can bring laughable already: everything is just as it should be.


	25. Epilogue

**A/N:** Here's the epilogue at last! It was by far the most difficult installment to write. Thank you so much to all of you who've read this story, and to those who've let me know what they think as the chapters are posted. Now that it's over, I hope you'll all let me know what you thought! I'm kind of sad that it's come to an end, but ready to move on to something new as well. I'm going to post this whole story as a .pdf over at my Livejournal (my user name is formerdinosaur), as well as a soundtrack for the story.

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><p>Mr. Garrison was late to class, and everybody was saying that maybe he had finally died. He was about a thousand years old, so it wouldn't be too shocking. Lee put his head in his hands and wondered how long it would take the rest of the teachers to figure out that Mr. Garrison was dead somewhere and send in a substitute. He also wondered if he would be sad, and decided that no, he wouldn't. Mr. Garrison was pretty much an asshole to him, and everyone, all the time. Lee's parents and a bunch of their friends had once campaigned to get him fired, but Garrison had tenure and seemed to enjoy torturing fourth graders too much to retire.<p>

Just as Simon Broflovski was declaring that they should all get up and leave, the classroom door opened and Garrison walked in. The students groaned openly, and he glowered at them.

"Settle down, you little bastards," Garrison said. He was stooped and slow, and he made his way into the room with the help of his cane; Lee had regular nightmares about being struck with it. A little girl with black hair walked in behind him. "Today is a very special day," Garrison said.

"No, it isn't," Tom Stoley said, because he was always saying stupid things like that. A couple of the girls who had crushes on him laughed.

"Yes, it is, Tommy, so shut your trap," Garrison said. He reached his desk and the girl stood beside it, looking awkward. She was wearing a plaid skirt and a sweater over a shirt with a stiffly ironed collar, and some of the girls were already whispering about how stupid her clothes looked. "We have a new student," Garrison said, gesturing to the girl. "I want you all to say hello to your new classmate - uh." He stared at her for a moment, and she stared back, unsmiling. "What's your name again?" Garrison asked.

"Emma," she said. She had a weird accent. There was some snickering about this.

"Say hi to Emma," Garrison said, addressing the class again.

"Hi," Lee said, stupidly, because everyone else was silent. They all laughed about this and he scowled. He was always doing the wrong thing in class. Emma was smiling at him, though, and she was kind of pretty, with big hazel eyes.

"And where are you from, Emma?" Garrison asked, sitting at his desk.

"The seventh layer of hell," she said. Natasha Black scoffed as if personally offended.

"Ooh, that's exciting," Garrison said, though he just sounded bored as usual and was already paging through one of the gossip magazines he kept on his desk. "I think I had another student from around there, a long time ago. And what do your parents do?"

"My dad's a homemaker," Emma said. "And my father is one of the seven princes of hell."

"So you have two daddies?" Garrison said, looking up from his magazine. He frowned. "Fine, well, why don't you go sit by Lee? He's in the same boat."

"Which one is Lee?" Emma asked, but she looked right at him. He waved, glad to have someone else with two fathers in class, so that he would take less heat for it himself. He didn't see why he should get picked on so much for it when Jacob Marsh had two dads and got interviewed on the local news about how good he was on the high school basketball team.

Natasha had to move to another desk so that Emma could take the one beside Lee's. Lee was glad about this. He hated Natasha.

Emma glanced at Lee as she sat down. He normally hated to be caught looking at girls, but she seemed nice, and like she perhaps shared his tendency to zone out and obliviously stare at people, though with her it was more like she was studying him. He tried smiling, and she smiled back.

"Hey, new kid," Tom whispered while Garrison droned on about something at the blackboard. The one good thing about Garrison was that he was basically deaf, so kids could talk freely during his lessons if he was facing the board. Emma turned to look at Tom. "Where did you get your clothes?" Tom asked. "_England_?"

Though this wasn't funny, the girls who liked Tom laughed. Lee considered tattling on him, but he didn't want to seem like a dork in front of this new girl.

"My dad made my clothes," Emma said, and everyone who heard this laughed, except Lee. His mom knitted sweaters and scarves and things for him all the time. Emma looked down at her clothes as if to check for errors, smoothing her sweater down self-consciously.

"What'd he make them out of?" Tom asked. He seemed to cast around for something funny to say, his mouth hanging open. He finally settled on: "Barf?"

"You're so stupid," Lee said, glaring at Tom. "Shut up."

"Oh, whoops, I guess Lee's gonna marry this girl because their dads can all be queer together."

"Shut up!"

Emma said nothing, but Lee could tell she was angry. She was flexing her fists as if she was barely containing the urge to start throwing punches. He could smell something like fireworks, or a candle that had recently been blown out. When she noticed him looking at her fists, he thought she would be mad that he was staring again, but she just looked worried.

At recess, none of the girls made any attempts to include Emma in their games, and the boys ignored her. Lee was accustomed to spending his recess hour with Simon and some of the other dorks, playing a game they'd made up that was based around their Friday night D&D sessions. He saw Simon and the others staring at him questioningly as he made his way over toward the new girl. She was sitting with her elbows on her knees, staring down at her shoes. They were old fashioned, shiny black with straps.

"Are you really from hell or whatever?" Lee asked, standing in front of her and toeing the asphalt. She looked up and nodded, hugging her elbows.

"I could have set that kid's hair on fire," she said. "But I really don't want to prove my father right."

"About what?"

"That I'd hate it here," Emma said. She sighed as if she was halfway to deciding that she had. "It's just so boring down there. No one wants to play with me because they're afraid of my father, and I'll never get any older than eight. I want to grow up, and play with regular kids who are still alive. I guess they all hate me, though."

"They don't hate you," Lee said. He sat down beside her. "They just don't know you yet."

"They don't seem to want to know me," Emma said. "I suppose I could go somewhere else. My father said we could live anyplace but in South Park, so me and Christophe decided that's exactly where we wanted to go."

"Who's Christophe?" Lee asked.

"My guardian angel sort of guy," Emma said. "He's around here somewhere. He grew up in South Park, when he was alive."

"Oh," Lee said. He tried to absorb all of this, his fingers twitching on his knees, but not a lot of it sunk in. "So. If you're from hell, have you met Satan?" He hoped she would say no, but she nodded.

"He's my grandfather," she said.

"My grandfather was Jack Tenorman," Lee said, hoping to deflect that information with his own impressive family history. "He played right tackle for the Broncos."

"I know," Emma said. Lee raised his eyebrows.

"You know?"

"Yeah, I know all about people who are in hell. He's there."

"My grandpa's not in hell!" Lee said, distressed, though maybe he was, because he'd never been around for Lee's dad, apparently.

"Sure he is," Emma said. "Most everyone who's dead is."

"What about my grandma?" Lee asked. There was no way Liane Cartman was in hell. She was saintly, according to his parents, and pretty. He'd seen pictures.

"She's there," Emma said. "But don't worry!" she said, touching Lee's leg when his face fell. "She loves it."

"How could you love being in hell?" Lee felt like he could cry. Of course the first girl who actually wanted to talk to him was telling him his grandma was in hell.

"Most people would prefer it to heaven," Emma said. "Or so my father says, anyway. He thinks he knows everything. He's right about some stuff, though. Hell stuff. Oh, say, since you're a boy and all, I wonder if you would consider getting me pregnant?"

"Um." Lee recoiled. "What?"

"Not now, of course. This body isn't ready for reproduction. But I won't be able to stay on earth for more than ten years if I don't have a human baby. It's a rule."

"Oh." Lee looked across the playground, wondering if he'd rather be with the other kids than this strange girl. "I'll think about it," he said, because he kind of liked her strangeness. There weren't many people in South Park who were brave enough to be different. "Does this mean you're going to stay?"

"Well, I guess so," she said, reaching down to tug her socks up. "I mean, if you want me to."

"Yeah, I think I do," Lee said, and they smiled at each other. "But hey. How come you were living in hell, anyway?"

"That's just where my father lives. And then my dad, he ended up there. He's really nice, though. A lot of nice people end up in hell."

"That sucks," Lee said fretfully. "But how come your father was living there?"

"He's the son of Satan," Emma said, shrugging as if that was all there was to it. "He tried living up here once, but they weren't nice to him. He really hates South Park. Christophe thinks it's funny that he has to live here now, while I'm in school, but I think it will be good for him, you know, like a second chance? Look, there he is."

"Your dad?" Lee said, going tense and whirling around.

"No, Christophe," she said. A scrawny, tired looking boy was walking toward them, smoking a cigarette.

"You'd better not let anyone see you with that," Lee said, nervously checking to make sure no teachers were watching.

"So this is Eric Cartman's miracle of science," Christophe said, ignoring that warning. He took the cigarette from his mouth and bent down to kiss Emma's cheek, which Lee found annoying.

"Don't hover around me when I'm at school," Emma said. "They already think I'm weird."

"You are weird, and good for you," Christophe said. His accent was funny, too, but it wasn't the same as Emma's. "Do you think I should go visit McCormick? It's been so long, I think I might scare the shit out of him."

"I don't know," Emma said. She tugged on Lee's arm. "Are there any McCormicks in your class? My father said not to make friends with them, so I was thinking maybe I would."

"The McCormick kids are older," Lee said. "Christine is in high school, and Clint is in junior high. Christine is nice, you should be friends with her. I'm friends with her," he added, proudly, because Christine was the prettiest girl in town. "Clint is kind of a butt head, but I have to see him at cookouts and stuff sometimes. He's okay."

"All this progeny is making my head spin," Christophe said. "I think I'll leave you two to your youth for the afternoon."

"Yes, please," Emma said.

"How old are you?" Lee asked before Christophe could walk away. He stopped and studied Lee the way Emma had in class, though less kindly.

"Zero years," he said. Lee scoffed.

"Ha ha."

"It's true," Emma said. "Sort of. He's dead, so he doesn't really have an age. Down in hell he looks older, but up here he's got to be my age."

"I don't understand any of this," Lee said, feeling dizzy.

"Spoken like a true Cartman," said Christophe.

Before Lee could defend his family name, Emma said something to Christophe in an elegant but angry language that Lee didn't know. Christophe returned something just as sharply, scoffed, and walked off, dragging on his cigarette. Emma watched him go and shook her head.

"What was that?" Lee asked, glad to see Christophe go.

"French," Emma said. "I told him he might be calling me Madame Cartman one day. Mostly just to piss him off. You don't have to marry me if you don't want to. Contracts between humans are irrelevant to the rules."

"Oh," Lee said, too confused to feel relieved about that. "So what did he say to you?"

"He called me a lunatic. Do you want to play a game or something? The air up here is so clear, it makes me want to run around."

Lee rarely wanted to run around, but, somehow, with her, he did. It was fun, if tiring. They made a game of kicking pine cones, and Simon Broflovski came over to play with them.

"I've got some questions for you, kid," Simon said to Emma.

"Okay," she said.

"Um, well, if you're from, like, _hell_, or whatever, then, I mean – do you have _powers_?"

"No," she said.

"Well, that's stupid," Simon said, looking disappointed.

"I agree," Emma said. She gave Lee a conspiratory smile that he didn't understand until after school, when they were heading toward the area where the kids who didn't ride the bus got picked up by their parents. Emma pulled Lee aside, checked over her shoulders to see if anyone was looking, and made a little fireball in her palm. He gaped at her, amazed and a bit frightened, and she closed her fist around it, putting out the fire and leaving that candle wick smell in the air.

"I can do other stuff, too," she said, whispering. "But don't tell anyone."

"How come?" Lee asked. He figured she could use this to impress the other kids, or at least scare them into being nice to her.

"I want to try this like a normal person," she said. "Just to see if I can do it."

"What if you can't?" Lee asked. He wanted to see her do that fire thing again, and it seemed too cool a talent to suppress.

"If I can't, I don't know, maybe I'll take over the earth and enslave mankind."

"Whoa," Lee said. She grinned.

"Just kidding," she said. "But if I did rule the earth or something, you could rule it with me."

"Really?" Lee appreciated that, though mostly it sounded like a lot of work.

"Yeah, really." She touched Lee's elbow. "But you won't tell anyone my secret, will you?"

"No," he said. "I promise." They shook on it, and Lee blushed when he felt how warm her palm was.

"Look, there's my parents," Emma said, nodding toward the road. "We just got that car yesterday, isn't it great?"

Lee turned, immediately aware of which car she was referring to. It was a shiny black Cadillac that looked like it was from the sixties, with flourishes over the tail lights that reminded Lee of bat wings. The car pulled up to the curb, and a smiling blond man with fussy clothes got out to hand Emma's pick-up number to the safety monitor. Behind the wheel, there was an angry-looking man with black hair and big arm muscles who instantly made Lee nervous. They both seemed way too young to be parents, barely older than Christine McCormick.

"How was your first day?" the blond man asked, kneeling down to hug his arm around Emma's shoulders. Lee was fairly sure that this was the non-demon parent, though he did have eerily smooth skin.

"It was good," Emma said. "I made friends. This is Lee Cartman."

"What was that?" the dark-haired man barked from the driver's seat, leaning toward them. "Cartman?"

"Lee, this is my dad," Emma said, gesturing to the blond man and ignoring the other. "His name is Pip."

"How do you do?" Pip said. His accent was more heavily British than Emma's, and he seemed nice. Meanwhile, Lee could feel the other man's stare burning against the side of his face like an open flame.

"And that there is my father," Emma said, gesturing to him. "Damien Thorn. Daddy, this is Lee," she said. "Don't be mean."

"I heard the name Cartman," Damien said.

"Darling," Pip said, and he gave Damien the kind of look that Lee's mom gave his dad if his dad was about to laugh inappropriately at the homeless or something.

"Where's that worthless nanny of yours?" Damien said, still looking angry, though he seemed less determined to burn a hole in Lee's skull with his eyes. "I told him not to leave your side."

"I'm here, asshole," Christophe said, appearing beside Lee as if out of thin air. "I don't have to be physically-"

"Yes, but I asked you to _be_ _physically_ with her at every moment," Damien said, his teeth grit.

"What am I going to do, enroll in school?" Christophe said. He had another cigarette, and was gesturing with it when he spoke. "I think I'd fail the entry exams when they take me to the school nurse and see I have no pulse, eh?"

"Let's not have this argument again, please," Pip said, standing. He put out his hand and Emma took it, which made Lee think of other home schooled kids he'd known. They were typically unembarrassed to be seen enjoying the company of their parents. "Come, children," Pip said, opening the back door of the car.

"You will cease referring to me as a child or face grave consequences," Christophe said.

"Get that cigarette out of my fucking car and away from my kid!" Damien said, and he and Christophe proceeded to argue in what sounded like French. Emma gave Lee an exasperated look and waved.

"See you tomorrow," she said, and she climbed in beside Christophe, who must have been losing the argument, because he'd thrown the cigarette out of the window.

"Do you need a ride, love?" Pip asked Lee.

"No, thanks," he said. "My dad's coming to get me." It was actually his mom, but he only called Butters that at home, usually.

"Well, you tell him that we said hello," Pip said. "You look rather like him. More trim, though, certainly. Though actually - your other father is Butters, I take it?"

"Uh-huh."

"He was always on the slender side."

"How do you know them?" Lee asked. His attempting to understand things that went over his head threshold was reaching its limit, and he was looking forward to being on the couch at home with some cookies and TV.

"I went to school here, a long time ago," Pip said. He sighed and looked at the school. Damien honked the horn.

"What the hell?" Damien said, apparently finished arguing with Christophe, who was sulking in the back seat. "Don't tell me you're getting sentimental about this pit," Damien said when Pip climbed in beside him.

"Quiet, you," Pip said, rubbing Damien's frightening bicep. Lee waved to Emma as the car pulled away, and he noticed that she was the only one wearing a seat belt. He found this scandalous, and, like most other things about her, exciting somehow.

Butters was there soon afterward, still in uniform but driving the family car. Lee preferred to be picked up in the police cruiser, even if he had to sit in back behind the cage-like divider, and he begged to be allowed to ride on the motorcycle Butters used at work, but it was forbidden.

"How's my little man?" Butters asked when Lee climbed into the car, and Lee moaned when his hair was ruffled, afraid someone would see.

"I'm good," Lee said. "There's a new girl. She might be my girlfriend, I don't know."

"Really!" Butters said, and his eyes were on the windshield as he pulled away from the school, so Lee couldn't tell if he was excited or disturbed by this news. "What's her name?"

"Emma Thorn."

"Thorn. Where do I know that name from?"

"I don't know," Lee said, not wanting to get into it about hell and everything right up front. "She's great, though. Oh, and Simon and Penny played with us at recess." He mentioned this because he knew his parents worried that he didn't have enough friends, and also because he was proud of himself. Simon and Penny were pretty cool. They'd laughed at a few things he said during the pine cone game - nicely.

"Sounds like you had a great day," Butters said. "And it's about to get even better, because!" He paused for dramatic effect. "It's meatloaf night."

"Yay!" Lee loved Butters' cooking possibly more than anything else in the world. He actually had a pretty home schooled kid attitude toward both of of his parents, though he'd learned not to let it show too much in public.

At home, his dad was having a beer at the kitchen table and reading something on his handheld. He was still in uniform, too, and he reached for Lee without looking up from whatever he was reading, giving him a one-armed hug and shaking him a little.

"Do you have homework?" he asked. This was always his first question.

"No," Lee said, leaning onto the table with his elbows so he could see the handheld's screen. It was something for work, a report.

"You're lying," Eric said, which was correct, but he didn't press. "Check this out," he said, sliding the handheld over toward Lee. "This guy got arrested for liberating his neighbors' chickens. Some PETA freak."

"What a freak," Lee agreed, though he sometimes felt sorry for animals in cages.

"Eric, don't show him that stuff," Butters said. He was at the fridge, getting wine for himself and a juice box for Lee. "And don't call people freaks," he said, more to Lee than to Eric, which seemed unfair.

"Some people are freaks, Butters," Eric said. "The kid knows this already." He gave Lee another shake, and Lee grinned, because he liked it when his dad called him _the_ _kid_, like Lee was his apprentice at the station.

"People have different beliefs," Butters said. He sat down across from them at the table. "Let's just leave it at that. Alright, Eric, brace yourself," he said, and he took a drink of wine. "Lee has himself a girlfriend."

"Mom!" Lee said, blushing, because some things were harmless if told to one parent and totally embarrassing if revealed to the other. He looked at his dad, who had raised his eyebrows, but only a little.

"Huh," Eric said. "Well, good for you, I guess. Never saw the appeal of women myself."

"Eric!" Butters said, plunking his wine glass down, and Lee laughed, because his dad was smiling the way he did when he'd intentionally rather than accidentally horrified his mom with some comment.

"I'm just stating the obvious," Eric said. "So?" He squeezed Lee's shoulder, his arm still hugged around him. "What's she like? Oh, shit, it's not one of the Broflovski litter, is it?"

"No," Lee said.

"God, tell me it's not a McCormick," Eric said, his arm going tense around Lee.

"Eric," Butters said, sighing. "Kenny's daughter is seventeen."

"Well, Leeloo is mature for his age."

"Don't call me that," Lee said, because it was the opposite of _the_ _kid_, his baby name.

"And Kevin's got kids all over town!" Eric said.

"It's not a McCormick!" Lee said. "And she might not even be my girlfriend, okay, so don't go around telling Kenny and everybody about this, please!"

"We wouldn't, honey," Butters said.

"Somebody better tell me which family this kid is from before I assume the worst," Eric said.

"Who's worse than the Broflovskis and the McCormicks in your esteemed opinion?" Butters asked. Lee was wondering this, too.

"Tucker's sister has kids!" Eric said. "Shit, what's her husband's last name-"

"It's a new girl, Dad!" Lee said. "Her name is Emma."

"Emma what?"

"Thorn," Butters said. "That sounded familiar to me, but I couldn't figure why."

"Where's she from?" Eric asked. "She's not a ginger, is she?"

"It's perfectly fine if she's a ginger!" Butters said immediately. Lee sighed and touched his own hair, which was reddish brown. He'd been assured by his dad many times that his lack of freckles made him _not_ a ginger.

"She's got black hair," Lee said. "And I don't know where she's from."

"She might be your girlfriend, but she didn't even tell you where she moved from?" Eric said, obviously suspicious. He could always tell when Lee was lying.

"She told me, but I forgot."

"Stop questioning him, Eric," Butters said. "I'm sorry I even brought it up, geez."

"Well," Eric said. "As long as Garrison isn't teaching sex ed, which, thanks to the heroic efforts of your South Park Chief of Police, he is not legally allowed to do, I'm sure everything will work itself out." He finished his beer and handed the empty bottle to Lee. "Throw that out for me," he said.

"Put it in the recycling bin," Butters corrected.

"The recycling bin," Eric said sadly, watching Lee deposit the bottle in the section for glass. "Butters, what have you done to me? Reducing me to this hippie nonsense."

"Nobody associates recycling with hippies anymore, Eric," Butters said. "Get with the times."

"No one says 'get with the times,' anymore, Butters. Get with kissing my ass."

For some reason, this sort of talk always ended with his parents smiling moonily at each other, and it was happening now, across the kitchen table. Lee grabbed his school bag and made himself scarce.

Upstairs, he stretched out on his bed and took out his own handheld, propping it against his knees and pushing the homework reminders off the screen. He had a new social contact request, but the parental controls would only let him see the user's name until his parents cleared it. He opened the invitation and smiled when he saw that he'd guessed correctly: Emma Thorn. His new best friend. Maybe girlfriend. Maybe mother of his child. They'd just have to wait and see.

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><p>Jacob had insisted on driving home from school, and by the tenth hour of navigating across icy, traffic-clogged highways, he was trying to remember why doing so had once felt so important. Kyle hadn't wanted him to drive, which had made driving seem absolutely necessary, but now he was exhausted and nearly ready to admit defeat, dreaming of finally arriving in his parents' house and dropping his head onto Kyle's shoulder. This was usually the way it went when they fought: Jacob admitted he was wrong, sometimes tearfully and only after suffering a good deal of discomfort for having ignored Kyle's advice. Kyle said this made him just like his father – his other father – but Jacob didn't think that was true, because Stan always did as Kyle asked from the start, as far as he could tell.<p>

He didn't reach South Park until after three o'clock in the morning, and he was fighting to stay awake by the time he pulled into his parents' neighborhood, chewing the insides of his cheeks. He parked in the driveway and left the stuff he'd brought home in the trunk. At the front door, shaking with exhaustion and from all the caffeine he'd consumed on the road, he struggled to fit his key into the lock. It seemed colder in South Park than it had been in Michigan, maybe just from the elevation. He unlocked the door and stepped into the living room, the smell of his childhood home hitting him like a mood-lifting drug. He'd noticed this when he came home for Thanksgiving last month, too: it was like freshly vacuumed carpet and dryer sheets, with something nutmegy mixed in. Now, a few weeks from Christmas, he could also smell the apple cinnamon air freshener things his parents always used around the holiday.

Stan and Kyle were asleep together on the couch, stretched out under a blanket with the TV still playing, the volume muted. Kyle had his phone clutched in his hand, and he was frowning in his sleep. Jacob took his phone out of his pocket and saw fifteen missed calls from home.

"You weren't answering your phone!" Kyle said, suddenly awake and catapulting off the couch. Stan woke with him, though more slowly, and he sat there smiling as Kyle pulled Jacob into his arms.

"I was driving," Jacob said. He put his head on Kyle's shoulder and closed his eyes, half-asleep already. "It was terrible."

"I told you! Why didn't you just fly?"

"Dude," Stan said, ambling over to put his arms around both of them. "We were worried."

"Sorry," Jacob said. Kyle cupped his cheeks with reproachful tenderness while Stan went to turn on the light beside the couch.

"Where are your things?" Kyle asked, searching the room.

"In the car. I'll get 'em tomorrow. I'm so tired."

"Was there ice on the highway?" Kyle asked, as if he needed to worry about it retroactively. Jacob shook his head.

"It was mostly cleared," he said. "Traffic was really bad, though."

"Want something to eat?" Stan asked, and he hugged Jacob again, putting him in an arm lock from behind.

"I made a noodle pudding and everything," Kyle said.

"The one with the raisins?" Jacob asked, brightening.

"Of course the one with the raisins! Do you want some?"

"Yeah, please."

He thought he was home free, heading toward the kitchen, but Kyle grabbed his wrist before he could walk off. The seriousness of his expression told Jacob that he'd noticed.

"What exactly is that in your mouth?" Kyle asked. Stan frowned and leaned in to see what Kyle was talking about. Jacob stuck his tongue out, partly delighted by Kyle's obvious horror. Stan just looked confused.

"It's a tongue piercing," Jacob said. "Obviously."

"That is against your religion!" Kyle said. He seemed too tired to get properly upset.

"Did it hurt?" Stan asked.

"No," Jacob said. It had, but neither of his parents could stand to hear about him suffering a moment's pain. "And there's nothing in the Torah about body piercings, okay? Plus, I'm not really Jewish."

"How can you say that to me?" Kyle's eyes went unfocused with grief, or exhaustion. "You had a bar mitzvah. Didn't we give you a lovely bar mitzvah?" He almost sounded like he was sincerely asking, or talking in his sleep.

"Dad." Jacob headed for the kitchen. "Not now, okay?"

"Why would you want to pierce your tongue?" Stan asked. He seemed less angry and more personally wounded by this, like he always was when Jacob did anything that reminded Stan that he wasn't eight years old anymore.

"I don't know," Jacob said, though he did. Issac had gotten his done, and Jacob couldn't stand it when Issac tried to act like he was more hardcore, or rebellious, or what the hell ever Issac thought he was these days. After Jacob got his tongue done, Issac had turned around and gotten his nipples pierced, too. Jacob wasn't sure he was up for that challenge, afraid of what the next hurdle would be.

"Can you eat with that thing in?" Kyle asked as he microwaved some noodle pudding.

"Yeah," Jacob said. "I usually take it out, though." He did so, putting the little silver barbell on a folded Christmas napkin that Kyle had set down for him. His parents stared at him, aghast. Stan recovered first, and handed Jacob the glass of milk that he'd poured for him.

"Well," Stan said, sitting beside him. "We're just glad you're home safe."

"You cannot wear that thing around your grandmother," Kyle said. Jacob rolled his eyes.

"Issac wears his around her," he said.

"Don't go emulating your cousin," Kyle said. The microwave beeped, and he retrieved the steaming noodle pudding. "He's younger than you, for God's sake."

"I'm not emulating him," Jacob said, offended. "I'm just saying."

"Can I have some, too?" Stan asked, looping his arm around Kyle's waist when Kyle served Jacob his plate. Kyle bent to kiss Stan's forehead, and they smiled at each other tiredly. Jacob started eating, though his food was too hot and the noodles burned his tongue.

"I might have some myself," Kyle said, going back to the casserole tray. "I didn't really have an appetite earlier. I was too worried that my son was careening off some frozen mountain road."

"Sorry," Jacob said, and it was true. "I'll fly home next time. I promise."

"Good," Stan said. He reached over to squeeze Jacob's wrist. "You know, I have some bad stories about those," he said, nodding to the barbell Jacob had removed from his tongue. "From my paramedic days."

"Oh, God!" Kyle said. "I'm sure you do. Let's finish eating first, though."

"I don't want to hear any paramedic stories tonight," Jacob said. Stan had retired from riding around in ambulances and had taken a less sensational position as a physical therapist, but the old cautionary stories still got brought up all the time – too often, in Jacob's opinion.

They ate together in the kitchen, Jacob answering questions about how his finals had gone. Mostly well, he thought, but it had been his first semester at college, and the finals were more intense than anything he'd undergone in high school. His parents told stories about their own college experiences, and Jacob half-listened, because he'd heard a lot of these stories before. Stan and Kyle were a little obsessed with their first two years at college – Stan's only two years – because it had been the one time in their lives, save their time spent in their mother's wombs, that they'd actually been apart. Kyle went to NYU, and Stan got a football scholarship from UVA, where he played for two years before he decided he hated it and moved up to New York to live with Kyle and train as a paramedic. They talked about those two years as if it was some war they'd suffered through, split apart in different platoons.

Jacob didn't want to be that way. His parents weren't the only people in South Park who'd partnered up in infancy and stuck to their guns on into middle age. Almost all of his parents' friends had been settled by the time they attended their senior prom, and to Jacob's generation it was sort of an alarming phenomenon. He'd made a point to play the field in high school, never committing to any one girl. Or to Issac, who he might not have known since the womb, but who had spent the first nine months of his life in the same womb that Jacob had once occupied, despite the fact that they weren't genetically related.

"We're having dinner at Grandma's tomorrow," Kyle said as Jacob was settling into bed, letting Kyle straighten his hair, too exhausted to bat his hand away. Stan had gotten his things from the car, though Jacob insisted he wouldn't need them until morning, and he was setting them down in a pile near the door.

"Grandma's," Jacob said, his eyes already closing. "Okay."

"Did you brush your teeth?" Stan asked, coming over to rub his shoulder.

"No," Jacob said.

Stan made a worrying noise, as if this lapse in teeth brushing was a bad sign. They were treating him like he was five. Jacob had predicted that this would happen when he came home from college, but he hadn't expected to actually appreciate it. He had during Thanksgiving, since it was the first time in his life that he'd returned to them after two months away, and now it was a little grating, but not very.

"I left my tongue stud downstairs," Jacob said. He cracked his eyes open and looked at Kyle. "Don't throw it out."

"What! I wouldn't!"

Jacob moaned doubtfully, imagining Kyle pretending that he'd crumbled up the napkin it was resting it on and pitched it into the trash without thinking, and that, whoops, he'd also taken out the trash, despite the fact that it was five o'clock in the morning and snowing.

"I'll go get it for you," Stan said. He kissed Jacob's ear. "G'night, dude."

"Night, Dad."

"I'm so glad you're okay," Kyle said, moaning and leaning down to hug him, as if Jacob had walked across two hundred miles of hot coals to get there. At moments, when the traffic was motionless and the satellite radio went dead, it had felt that way. As he fell asleep he got the sense of his parents standing in his doorway and admiring him, and he remembered being very little and waking up surprised that they weren't still with him. He used to wander down the hall petulantly with his stuffed elephant and get into bed with them without comment, and he would cry and beat the door with his fist if he found it was locked. He had hated the feeling that they had anything together that was secret from him. In hindsight, he was very glad that they'd been vigilant about locking the door on those nights when their bedroom light was still on and the mattress was squeaking. He used to think that they'd been playing games without him, and always got the feeling they were lying when they told him that they hadn't been, because there would be a sense of interrupted joy lingering in the room.

He woke up to a gray morning and the feeling of his mattress dipping as someone sat on it. It wasn't one of his parents; they were heavier. Jacob moaned with annoyance, but didn't move away when Issac spooned up behind him and pressed his freezing nose to his neck.

"Hey, asshole," Issac said. "You don't answer your phone anymore?"

"Ike," Jacob said, his face still buried in his pillow. Nobody else called Issac that, because it was too confusing. Issac mostly just called Jacob 'asshole' or 'dickhead,' affectionately. "What time is it?"

"I don't know," Issac said. "You know how I feel about time."

Jacob grunted. Issac's feeling was that time was imaginary. He had a lot of feelings about things that everyone else accepted as reality, and he'd quit high school at sixteen to work at Whistlin' Willy's, because his feeling was that slinging pizzas and singing the birthday song to ten year olds was more fulfilling than listening to lectures by teachers who were dumber than him.

"So," Issac said, wriggling until Jacob could feel the shape of those nipple rings against his back. Even through both of their t-shirts, they felt as cold as Issac's nose. "You're home."

"Just for the break."

Issac scoffed. "No shit. How's college?"

"Fine."

"Are you coming to Grandma's tonight?"

"Of course," Jacob said, and he groaned, realizing that Issac wasn't going to let him sleep any longer. He rolled onto his back and blinked up at his cousin. Issac was wiry like his father and pretty like his mother, with her wavy blond hair, though his was darker than Bebe's, just a shade away from light brown. At the moment, his hair was also partly green, his roots more grown out than they'd been at Thanksgiving. Issac beamed down at Jacob with the unchecked adoration that always made Jacob feel guilty for going away, even though he was glad that he had, most days, when Issac wasn't staring him down like this.

"What'd you get me for Christmas?" Issac asked.

"Nothing yet," Jacob said. "What do you want?"

"Um," Issac said, and Jacob winced when Issac bent down to lick his neck.

"Hey, c'mon," Jacob said, rolling away from him. It used to make his heart pound, trying to negotiate Issac's advances, but now it just made him feel tired, and much older than Issac, though they were only a year apart. Almost as soon as Aunt Bebe had Jacob, she got pregnant with Issac the old-fashioned way, whereas Jacob the embryo had been expensively implanted. Jacob sometimes felt like Issac had read a cheat sheet for staying close to him, that he got an unfair advantage from having a consecutive nine months in the place where Jacob became a person.

"Have you got a girlfriend?" Issac asked, spooning him mercilessly.

"No," Jacob said. He had slept with a few girls at school, but he didn't return their calls. He wanted to live, to _know_ a lot of different people, none of this from-birth romance for him.

"Me either," Issac said. "So, according to our rules—"

"We haven't got rules anymore."

"Oh, okay. But according to them, because yes, we do have them, that means—"

"_Ike_."

"I love it when you call me that." Issac moaned, squeezing him. "Man, I miss you. Seeing you at Thanksgiving only made it worse."

"You're so shameless," Jacob said. It was partly a relief. He'd been afraid that when he came home from college Issac would be angst-ridden and cold to him.

"Shame is for the weak and indecisive," Issac said.

Jacob grunted, already half asleep again. He'd spent so many nights with Issac clinging to him that it felt more natural than sleeping alone. When they weren't wrapped up together, this tended to worry him. As kids, they couldn't walk two blocks in South Park without someone stopping to remark on how much like Stan and Kyle they were, inseparable and synchronized to a step, shoulders bumping together as they beat their super best friends paths around town. They'd taken pride in that when they were young, but once Jacob was a teenager he didn't want to be his father's clone. He couldn't help that he looked so much like Stan, but he could choose not to let Issac pin him down to South Park, so he'd fled for a far away college. That hadn't curbed Issac's enthusiasm much.

"Did your parents tell you I got my GED?" Issac asked.

"Yeah," Jacob said. He reached back to pat Issac's skinny ass in congratulations, only thinking better of this when it was too late. "That's awesome, man."

"It was totally easy. So, anyway, I applied to Michigan State."

"Ike." Jacob groaned and rolled toward him. "You can't stalk me to college."

"Yeah, I can," Issac said. He didn't have Asperger's as such, but he had that genius thing that made him socially oblivious. It was more willful than automatic. "Unless you've replaced me. Do you have some new best friend whose fingerprints match yours?"

"Ours don't actually match," Jacob said. He held up his hand in demonstration and let Issac press their palms together. When they were little, when they learned how fingerprints formed, they were sure that theirs were identical. Later, Jacob suspected that Issac had always been too smart to actually believe theirs could be the same, and that he'd humored Jacob's idea that they were out of kindness, or because he wanted it to be true.

"I know," Issac said. "That's a joke. Our inside joke. You used to get my jokes."

"Are you okay?" Jacob asked. He touched Issac's cheek, though he didn't want to encourage him.

"I am now," Issac said.

"You should go to college someplace far away from South Park," Jacob said. "But somewhere new. Not Michigan. Someplace where you can make your own friends."

"But I hate people," Issac said. He put his head down on Jacob's pillow and pushed their foreheads together. "You're the only person I like."

"That's not true. What about Sydney?"

"She's my sister. I have to like her. And half the time I don't even."

For a while they just lay there studying each other's eyes. It wasn't like having a conversation without words; it was the opposite of a conversation. Together, oftentimes, they were two dumb animals who couldn't quite figure out that they didn't actually share a thought process.

"You look skinny," Jacob finally said.

"You look fat," Issac said. Jacob shrugged.

"The freshman fifteen," he said. "And I'm not playing basketball anymore." Refusing to take his early athletic success seriously had been another way that he attempted to differentiate himself from his dad. Stan and Kyle were relieved that he didn't want to play in college, afraid that he'd suffer injuries and be distracted from his schoolwork. Jacob didn't want to go pro or deal with the press, but he missed having strict work outs, being part of a team. The only other team he'd ever belonged to was the one that was just him and Issac, and he thought he'd quit it, too, but he was in no hurry to get Issac out of his bed, despite his resolutions. Over Thanksgiving break, they'd had one of their _encounters_, and it had served as Jacob's introduction to Issac's tongue piercing. It was inspiring, if nothing else.

"So how's Whistling Willy?" Jacob asked, hoping this wasn't too mean.

"I would not know," Issac said. "I got a new job. Kyle didn't tell you? I'm over at Tire World now."

"Oh. How's that?"

"Rubbery," Issac said, and he pressed closer when Jacob laughed at his joke. "No, really, it's good. They're going to put me on the sales floor during the holiday rush."

"You're selling tires with green hair?"

"That's the condition," Issac said. He looked sad about this, though the green hair - or what was left of it - was awful. "I have to fix the hair, and start wearing ties. Will you help me?"

"With which one?" Jacob thought of doing up Issac's tie at his bar mitzvah. Issac had been uncharacteristically nervous beforehand, fish-white.

"Well, both," Issac said, frowning. "Frankly, dude, I need you to move home so you can do my tie for me every day before work."

"Nope," Jacob said, concerned that he might be serious.

"Then I guess I'll have to come to Michigan. Aren't they famous for their tires?"

"I'm pretty sure that's Miche_lin_."

"Oh, right. Well, at any rate. I'm probably not going to major in tires."

"Don't you want to know what life without me around is like?" Jacob asked. He sat up on his elbow to communicate his seriousness on this point, and to separate from Issac, who was getting dangerously close to his mouth.

"Uh," Issac said. "I do know. You've been gone since August. It sucks."

"But you're putting all your energy into pining for the past," Jacob said. This sounded a little rehearsed, because it had been. He'd had a lot of time during that drive to think about what sort of wisdom he'd try to impart to Issac.

"Nice alliteration," Issac said. "Alas, I don't care. You're not the past. You're right here."

"Don't let my lack of willpower fool you," Jacob said. "I'm not really _here_."

Issac was quiet for a moment, unreadable. "That's the worst thing you've ever said to me," he said. Jacob dropped back down to the pillow and tried to cuddle him in penance, but Issac moved away.

"You know what I mean," Jacob said.

"Yeah." Issac sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "I do, that's the problem."

"Well, what do you want from me, man? You're in a rut, and the rut is me. It's my fault, I know. I was older-"

"Was?" Issac stood, apparently taking particular exception to this. "You blew your load in my mouth like two weeks ago."

"Three weeks," Jacob muttered, ashamed of himself. "And I shouldn't have."

"This is unacceptable," Issac said, and he walked to the window.

"Don't forget your jacket," Jacob said. He didn't want Issac to go, but he had to start acting his age, in the hope that Issac would follow his lead. Issac picked up his jacket as angrily as possible, whipping it behind him as he pushed the window open.

"You know," Issac said when he was straddling the windowsill and scowling at Jacob, his jacket only halfway on. "I could have been a neurosurgeon or something."

"You still could," Jacob said. Issac usually didn't level this accusation at him when he was sober, but it wasn't unfamiliar. "And you hate the kind of people who need to be called neurosurgeons before they can feel like they did something with their lives."

"Don't tell me who I hate," Issac said. "I hate you, mostly."

"Oh, get out of here."

"Yeah, well, we'll see if you get blown in the bathroom during family dinners this time around," Issac said. He dropped out of the window and leaned back in to glower at Jacob, standing outside. "I've done you so many favors!" he said, suddenly shouting. Jacob covered his eyes with his hand.

"Send me an invoice," he said. Issac left then, slamming the window shut behind him. In roughly five seconds, Kyle at was at Jacob's bedroom door, still doing up the sash on his flannel robe.

"What the hell?" Kyle said. Stan was close behind, looking ready for a fight. Jacob was surprised he wasn't wielding a baseball bat.

"It was just Issac," Jacob said.

"What, at the window?" Kyle said.

"Yes."

"He still does that?" Stan said, walking into the room. He went to the window and frowned, presumably at the sight of Issac jogging off down the road.

"Why didn't you tell me he's working at Tire World?" Jacob asked. He sat up in bed, draping his comforter over his shoulders to keep warm. "He wants me to cut his hair, or something. So he can sell tires."

"That boy is a textbook narcissist," Kyle said, joining Stan at the window. "Ike and Bebe don't want to hear that, but it's true."

"Don't be so hard on him," Stan said. "He just misses his best friend."

"As if the problems began when Jacob went to college! Alright, well, now we're all awake. I'm making coffee."

Downstairs, Jacob drank coffee with his parents until he felt jumpy. Stan made pancakes, and the sugary maple syrup contributed to Jacob's shakiness. He needed to do something with his energy, and his parents were just sitting around reading the news on their handhelds and muttering about errands they would have to do later. Jacob got dressed and decided to go see Christine, who was the only person he had ever talked with honestly about Issac and the whole deal.

"Be back for lunch," Kyle said. "I'll need your help at the grocery store."

"What, reaching things on the high shelves?" Jacob asked, and he smirked when Kyle gave him a look.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Stan asked. He held up the barbell that he'd rescued the night before. "I cleaned it for you," Stan said when Jacob came to claim it. "You're cleaning it daily, right?"

"Of course," Jacob said, though he wasn't. "Thanks."

"I'm still telling you piercing horror stories," Stan said. "Later."

"I'll look forward to it," Jacob said. He went to the hall mirror to reinstall his piercing, and thought about surprising Issac with it later.

"You're not driving, are you?" Kyle asked as Jacob headed toward the door.

"Nah." He needed a long, bracing walk after that confrontation with Issac. It wasn't unusual for Issac to randomly shout at him, or anyone, but that had felt a bit different, and Jacob wanted to be relieved, because of course they would need to fight seriously if Issac was ever going to move on with his life. He was also aware that part of the impediment to this was his own reluctance to let Issac go, and he was in a fairly self loathing mood by the time he reached the McCormick house.

Kenny answered the door, still sporting the beard that had so offended Kyle at Thanksgiving. They exchanged hugs and how are you's, and Jacob did the same with Wendy in the family kitchen. She was dressed for work, whereas Kenny was barefoot in sweatpants and a long-sleeved BOOK IT t-shirt.

"The kids are still asleep," Wendy said.

"They're always asleep," Kenny said. "Clint is going to major in sleep at college."

"They stay up all night," Wendy said. "We go to bed at eight."

"Nine thirty," Kenny said. He jostled Jacob's shoulder. "You'll understand someday."

"Yeah." He didn't really plan on understanding, since he was banking on being a lifelong bachelor. "Can I wake Christie up?"

"Of course," Wendy said. "It's nearly noon."

"Just knock first," Kenny said. He'd always been a little suspicious of Jacob's closeness with Christine, though their relationship was completely asexual. "To make sure she's decent."

"Will do."

Jacob jogged up the stairs, past Clint's room, which reeked of aftershave and nostril-stinging incense. Clint was a harmless weirdo like his father, and Jacob got along with him well enough, but he'd always preferred Christine. He knocked on her door, and she called out to ask who was there.

"It's Cobbie," he said. She was the only one who'd ever called him that.

"Come in!"

He was smiling as he came through the door, because she'd sounded very happy to see him. In the past, he'd considered how much easier it would have been to develop some weird secret thing with Christine, who was a girl, and not his cousin, but she felt too much like his sister for him to think of her as anything else.

"When did you get back?" she asked when he sat on her bed and hugged her. She was in pajamas, her music player docked on her bedside clock, playing something acoustic and quiet.

"Last night," he said. "Really late."

"I've been here since Wednesday," she said. "Finished my stuff early. Your finals went okay?"

"Yep."

He stretched out in bed beside her and they chatted about school. Christine was fooling around with her handheld while they spoke, and she pointed people out when they came up in conversation, scrolling through her social index. Jacob was glad that she'd come out of her shell a bit since leaving South Park. As a kid, she was often glued to his side, reviled by most of the other girls because, through Jacob, she spent so much time with the boys. Now she was going to college in Seattle, studying History, already thinking about law schools.

"Ike came over this morning," Jacob said after they'd talked about school for a while. Christine looked up from her handheld.

"Your uncle?"

"No, Issac the second. He was in a state."

"Isn't he always?" Christine put her handheld away and rolled toward Jacob, resting her chin on his shoulder. It was so different from when Issac did it, intimate but aimless. "At least call him Issac so I don't have to picture his father doing - whatever he did."

"He didn't do much. He just humped me a little and then had a meltdown."

"Over what?"

"Apparently he's applied to Michigan State."

"Oh, God." Christine moaned. "He's probably lying."

"It's certainly possible. But, okay, the weird thing? I don't want him up there with me, I really don't, but I didn't want him to leave, either."

"Of course you didn't," Christine said, slapping his chest. "You wanted to get laid. Herein lies the problem, pretty much from the onset."

"No, it's more than that," Jacob said. He'd tried to explain it to her in the past, but he always ended up sounding like a sentimental idiot or the victim of a con artist. She sat up and gave him a skeptical look.

"Let me see this thing," she said, pulling at his bottom lip. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue so she could frown at the piercing. "He's a bad influence on you," she said.

"I'm the older one," Jacob said. "I was a bad influence on him."

"You provided a good example in most areas," Christine said, very charitably. "He dropped out of school for no reason."

"He dropped out because I'd graduated, therefore he saw no reason to continue to show up."

"Well, that's demented." She settled down onto the pillows again, and they both looked at the ceiling of her bedroom. "Anyway, he cannot come to school with you. Obviously."

"Obviously," Jacob agreed. "But then I hate the thought of him on his own."

"You're a vicious cycle."

"That's not really news to me." Jacob always thought he wanted to talk with her about this, then regretted it when faced with sane advice. "So. Are you dating anyone?"

"I'm being pursued by this Biology TA," she said. "He's one of those guys who wasn't cool when he was younger, so he's really impressed by his marginal adult coolness."

"Sounds like he sucks."

"Mostly, yeah." She sighed, and Jacob felt badly for her, though also relieved. He was as protective of her as Kenny, ironically. She hadn't dated at all in high school, to their mutual relief.

"But don't change the subject," she said, elbowing him. "What are you going to do about Issac?"

"What can I do? Take out a restraining order?"

"It might be advisable."

"No, it might not." Jacob sat up, increasingly irritated. "You know, maybe none of this would have happened if I didn't always feel like the only one who defends him."

"His parents indulge him pretty frequently," Christine said.

"That doesn't count. Ike - Issac - he's really smart. South Park stunted him. _I _stunted him."

"He's talked you into blaming yourself," Christine said. "That's sad. He seduced you, Cob. I'll admit that he's cute as fuck. And you're too nice. Too accommodating, I mean. You were always going to be seduced by the first cute person who tried it."

"See, that's the kind of attitude I hate!" Jacob said. He got out of her bed and started pacing. "That South Park bullshit. You're fated to end up with the first person who batted their fucking eyes at you. The _curse_."

"Why do you think I waited until after I'd left town?" Christine said, grinning.

"Oh, God. It's not like it's real."

The curse was something that was either made up by Jacob's generation or by the one immediately preceding or following his. According to legend, there was a witch who had lived in the mountains and fallen in love with a boy from South Park back around the time the town was founded, during the Gold Rush. The boy romanced her, but after he became wealthy he moved away and broke her heart. In revenge, she placed a curse on the town that meant the first person a resident of South Park kissed - or fucked, depending on who was telling the story - would own them forever, and that they would never be able to truly love unless they returned to their sweetheart from home.

"I don't know, Cob," Christine said. "I think you might just have to propose marriage and get it over with."

"Christ." The idea of marrying Issac was too macabre to even joke about. "Let's talk about something else."

"Fine." Christine patted the bed, and Jacob sat again. "Are you seeing anyone at school?" she asked.

"I would have told you if I was." They talked often but briefly, through text messages.

"But you're sleeping with people?" Christine said. "Men?"

"Men! No!" He had yet to be attracted to anyone male who wasn't just some guy who looked like Issac, which didn't count. "A couple of girls. Nobody special."

"That's gross." She shoved him.

"That's normal. The thing with Issac is gross." He felt terrible saying so. They'd had so many things together that were special. When they lost their virginity to each other Issac sobbed and told Jacob that his faith in God had been restored, because their connectedness was too profound to be wholly organic. He rescinded this soon afterward, during a fight, but for Jacob it was still a good memory.

"You need to tell him in no uncertain terms that he's not to follow you to Michigan," Christine said.

"I have told him! I did, just this morning! He ignored me. That's not even what set him off."

"What did set him off?"

"I told him I wasn't there."

"Huh?"

"Never mind." Jacob stood again. "I'm not going to survive this winter break," he said, dramatically, reminding himself of Kyle. "I'm not even going to survive dinner at our grandparents' house tonight."

"It's so eerie that you have the same grandparents," Christine said, wrinkling her nose. "You've never seemed - related."

"We've never felt related. I feel more related to you and Clint."

"Zelda once told me that everyone in South Park is related if you go back far enough," Christine said. "It's one reason I don't date boys from around here."

"Is Zelda home for the break yet?" Jacob asked. Talking about Issac was, as usual, getting him nowhere.

"She's home," Christine said. "She's irritatingly interested in Clint's whereabouts, lately."

"_Clint_?"

"My thoughts exactly."

"God!" Jacob felt like punching something - himself, mostly. "She's got a whole university full of people to get crushes on, a whole semester to do it, and she comes home to moon over goddamn Clint?"

"Don't you dare tell her I said this!" Christine said. "It's just my theory."

"As if I talk to Zelda Donovan."

"Don't be a snob!"

"Don't be so sanctimonious!"

"You need to go home and take a nap," Christine said, waving her hand to dismiss him. "You're grouchy as hell. And you're mad that I don't like that thing on your tongue."

"I don't care about your opinion on my piercings," Jacob said, though he had been deeply annoyed by her reaction.

"Your problem is that you want to be this perfect, normal little golden boy, _and_ a depraved, incestuous rebel," Christine said. "You want to wear the letterman jacket _and_ the tongue ring. You're clashing with yourself."

"It's not incest!" Jacob said, dispensing with the rest of that for now.

"Right, but the thrill involved is incest-like, you must admit."

"You sound like my dad!"

"Which one?"

"Kyle! When he's analyzing someone. Don't tell me how I'm getting my - thrills. You don't have a dick. You don't understand."

"Oh, my God!" She was laughing, falling over onto her side. Humiliated, Jacob took a pillow from the end of her bed and threw it at her.

"Alright, that was stupid," he admitted. "Look, I'm on about four hours of sleep here. Being back is making me feel insane."

"Issac is making you feel insane," Christine said, still lying on her side, her long hair tumbling over the edge of her bed. "I can't have a conversation with that kid without wanting to bang my head against a wall, and I never fucked him."

"Well, lucky you," Jacob said, and again he felt guilty, on behalf of his private history with Issac. "You know, I sometimes wonder if I ever should have confided in you about this."

"Why?" Christine sat up, looking hurt. "You know I'm only teasing. I'm trying add levity to the situation."

"Maybe the fact that my cousin is self destructing over his obsession with me is not the kind of situation that calls for levity."

"Don't give yourself all the blame for his self destruction," Christine said. "Or the credit, for that matter. You know, Cobbie, you've gotten awfully vain."

"You know, Christie, you've gotten awfully judgmental."

"Maybe." She made a face, as if shelving this for later reflection. "But I love you, alright? I don't want you to suffer needlessly."

"Any suffering I do over this was pretty earned," Jacob said, and he felt miserable, because it was true. She shrugged.

"Just learn from your mistakes, maybe," she said. "Instead of immortalizing them with tongue jewelry."

He withheld a further idiotic comment about how she couldn't possibly understand the life altering experience of being blown by someone who knew how to use a tongue stud. He didn't want to fight with her, especially with Issac already soured on him, and not even a day into his winter break. He sighed and walked over to Christine's desk, pretending to be interested in some books that were stacked there.

"If Zelda marries Clint, I refuse to attend the wedding," he said.

"I'm with you there," Christine said. "Zelda could so do better than my brother. Though, honestly, she'd make him miserable, too. We should try to pass a law about people from South Park not being able to mate with each other until the gene pool clears up a bit."

"I guess that's sacrilegious," Jacob said, flipping through the pages of one of her books. "Since we wouldn't exist without the curse."

"You know what I'd like to see?" Christine said.

"Hmm?"

"An alternate universe where they were all scattered around the world. Where they didn't grow up together, and they didn't even meet until they were out of college. I'd like to see if they'd all still be each other's soul mates."

"That's sort of depressing," Jacob said, trying to imagine his parents growing up without each other, all the stories about their happy childhood evaporated. "I wouldn't even recognize my parents if they weren't, uh. Well, if they weren't who they are. They'd be totally different."

"I guess," Christine said. "I can't imagine what my dad would be like if he hadn't grown up with your parents. He talks about them like they saved his life."

"But that was him," Jacob said. He frowned and set the book down. "Right? He saved my dad from drowning."

"Yeah." Christine nodded to herself. "I guess it's pointless to speculate. This place is what it is. You just have to decide if you're going to let it entrap you or not."

"By 'it' you mean Issac."

"Well. Yes. Of course that's what I mean."

"Obviously I haven't gotten trapped, though, right?" Jacob said. "I mean, I left! I'm gone!"

"Yes, but your heart is still here," she said. She looked sad for him, and he wanted the levity back. "I think. Entrapped."

Jacob left the McCormick house in a bad mood, annoyed with himself for repeating his old pattern of pissing Issac off and running to Christine, then longing to lament about her judgments of him to Issac, thus completing the cycle. He wanted to go to Issac's house and sit on the couch with the four Broflovski siblings, whose crowding always offered an excuse to basically flop against Issac's side in plain view. He resisted the urge to show up there and headed home instead. Kyle was in the kitchen, finalizing his shopping list.

"Dad left for work," Kyle said when Jacob leaned beside him at the counter, watching Kyle write down things they needed from the store: _grapes_, _napkins_, _tongue_ _scrapers_.

"Tongue scrapers?" Jacob said.

"Well, you know, everybody's always serving red wine at these holiday things. I get self conscious about tongue stains."

"Oh. I thought that was some dig at me."

"I would never dig at you," Kyle said, reaching over to smooth his hair. "No matter what you put through your tongue."

They left for the store shortly afterward, and Jacob laughed when Kyle tried to jam his ceramic coffee mug into the car's cup holder. He wedged it in until it was precariously secure.

"Do you seriously not own a travel mug?" Jacob asked.

"They're all in the dishwasher or something," Kyle said.

"Well, now I know what I'm getting you for Christmas."

"Yes, good idea," Kyle said. "Get me a robot housemaid who will actually remember to run the dishwasher." He dislodged the coffee cup, drank some and handed it to Jacob.

"I don't want any," he said. "I'm still all jittery."

"Take it, though," Kyle said. "Be my cup holder."

"This is why you like having me home," Jacob said, holding the cup with both hands to leech heat from it. "I'm your robot housemaid."

"Oh, ha! That's hilarious."

It was true that Jacob had rarely done any significant chores, growing up. More often, he kept his parents company while they did them. He'd liked being included in anything he considered to be an adult pastime, whether it was helping Stan pick up sticks before he mowed the yard or doing the grocery shopping with Kyle. It still made him feel content and even a little spoiled, riding along with his dad on the way to the store, holding his coffee for him.

"So, Issac came by this morning?" Kyle said.

"Uh-huh." Jacob was mortified at the thought of Stan ever finding out about him and Issac, but he was tempted at moments to tell Kyle everything. He'd always felt a bit jealous of Kyle's patients, who Kyle saw at the house. Sometimes after a particularly grueling session Kyle would come into Jacob's room and hug him fiercely, as if to thank him for being so untouched by tragedy, happy and normal. Jacob wanted to tell Kyle about Issac partly because he secretly needed Kyle's opinion on everything, and partly because he wanted to prove that he'd been through something as shocking as any of Kyle's patients, if not as traumatic.

"How's Issac doing?" Kyle asked after Jacob had sat there in silence for a while, turning the coffee cup in his hands. Kyle had an annoying, therapisty habit of giving people a long time to speak before he felt he should move the conversation along.

"Same as always," Jacob said. "He's talking about college now, though."

"Yeah, Ike told me! So, that's good."

"Hmm. He said he wants to apply to Michigan State."

"What!" Kyle braked hard at a red light and turned to Jacob. "Well, that's crazy."

"I know," Jacob said, though he was tempted to defend Issac. Kyle had been one of his major detractors ever since he quit school.

"He'll have to start off with community college," Kyle said. "For one thing."

"Yeah. He is a genius, though. His test scores-"

"Well, I don't care what he is, he's not coming up there to distract you and take you to piercing parlors, you're up there to get an education, not to bum around with your cousin-"

"Dad! I know! Jesus, it's not like this was _my_ plan."

"I worry about that boy." Kyle was frowning at the windshield. He reached for his coffee and Jacob passed it over.

"He's just a teenager," Jacob said. "He'll figure his shit out."

"I suppose. Thank God you never went through that phase. Ike did, you know. He was just too much of a special snowflake to show up to class for a while."

"And everything turned out fine," Jacob said.

"Jury's still out," Kyle said, and he grinned when Jacob laughed.

"What's it like to have a brother?" he asked, without thinking, and he wanted to retract the question when Kyle's face fell, just a little, the wrinkles around his eyes smoothing out.

"Oh," Kyle said. "It's complicated. But good. I'm sorry you never-"

"_Dad_, that's not what I meant."

"I always hoped Ike's kids felt like your siblings," Kyle said. "They certainly never felt like my children, though. Well, except Simon, maybe, but you two were never close."

"Simon's fine," Jacob said. He was the smartest of Ike's kids in a non-genius way, or at least the best in school. Jacob was a little jealous of him, which was ridiculous, because Simon was twelve and a complete dork, but he was Kyle's favorite nephew, and the two of them bonded over certain shared fastidious qualities and hair troubles. Bebe's effortless waves had been beautifully recreated on Issac, but on Simon they were muddied by Ike's coarse, straight hair, resulting in a frizzy brown mess.

"I do wonder what my biological brother might have been like," Kyle said. "If we would have done each other's hair or something."

"Only if he was gay, too," Jacob said, and he ducked when Kyle swatted him.

"I used to have this recurring dream that I had a different adopted brother," Kyle said. "Or, he wasn't my brother exactly, he was this French chap who chain smoked. I could have sworn I saw this exact kid in town a few months ago, did I tell you that?"

"This is the first I've heard of him," Jacob said.

"I guess it should have startled me, but it sort of cheered me up," Kyle said. "He's probably just some kid I'd seen around without consciously noticing - it's hard to tell how far back recurring dreams actually go unless you keep a diary. You know my feelings about dream analysis, though."

"Yeah, I know your feelings."

"Well." Kyle wedged the empty coffee cup back into the holder as they pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store, which was too small and crowded as usual. "Anyway, what were were talking about?" Kyle asked. "Issac?"

"Sort of."

"He came to your room? What did he want? What's with the window thing, anyway? He sort of slammed it on his way out, the little brat. Scared your dad and me half to death."

"He likes to pick fights with me, that's all." It was actually Jacob's fault this time, and he was feeling increasingly worse. He regretted telling Kyle about Issac's plan to attend Michigan State.

"Pick fights about what? Who could fight with you?"

"You've fought with me."

"Not really! Have I? It doesn't count if I'm just telling you to turn your music down or something."

Jacob tried to remember a serious fight with either of his parents, and he couldn't think of anything. He liked making them proud, and they had devoted a lot of their lives to making him happy. He suspected they were still in significant debt from the act of creating him alone, even with Bebe doing the surrogacy and Shelly donating the egg for free. He tried not to think about it, but he did, and ever since he was old enough to comprehend the gravity of where babies came from in cases like his he'd had a sense of not wanting to let them down. He'd saved most of his melodrama, teenage angst and selfishness for fights with Issac.

"I guess he just got mad because I had the same reaction to this Michigan State idea that you did," Jacob said.

"It's about time you laid down the law with him," Kyle said, sounding pleased. "He can't hero worship you forever."

"It's not hero worship, Dad. Issac is an iconoclast."

"Iconoclast - please! He looks at you like you invented the sun. Or something bigger than that, since he probably dismisses the sun as trite. Anyway, you know." Kyle paused for a moment. They'd parked, and were sitting in the car, Jacob starting to crash after his earlier caffeine high. "Dad and I used to worry that he had a crush on you," Kyle said, and something about the heaviness in the air inside the car made that statement very unsurprising once it was actually said. Jacob forced a laugh.

"I think he's asexual," he said, and he hurried to get the passenger door open. Kyle had parked too close to the neighboring car on Jacob's side, and he had to side step to squeeze his way out. He walked toward the store without waiting for Kyle, who jogged to catch up.

"I didn't mean to embarrass you," Kyle said, tugging on his elbow.

"I'm not embarrassed," Jacob said. "Why would I be embarrassed?"

"Oh, _honey_."

Jacob was no longer sure what kind of conversation they were having. Thankfully, it ended once they were inside the busy store, and Kyle simply asked Jacob to fetch things while he waited in line at the deli and then then fish counter, making very particular requests that reminded Jacob of his grandma Sheila when she ordered things. They lost each other briefly, and reunited in the dairy section, where Kyle was searching through the half gallons of egg nog for one that was furthest from expiration.

"Let's be hasty," Kyle said as Jacob piled the things he'd collected into the cart. "I saw Tweek in the frozen aisle. All I need right now is to get trapped in some awkward conversation with him and Craig."

"Oh, man," Jacob said. He was still afraid of Principal Tucker, who had hated him because of his association with Issac. "Copy that."

They managed to escape without having to talk with Craig or Tweek, who Jacob actually liked, but who was an extremely awkward conversationalist in the best of circumstances and especially when he was outside of his comfort zone, the public library. Back in the car, Jacob was afraid Kyle would try to talk about Issac again, but he didn't. Kyle gossiped about South Park citizens who were of varying interest: apparently Wendy was gaining weight, though Jacob had thought she looked the same as always when he'd seen her that morning, and Butters Stotch was doing the middle school holiday pageant this year. Kyle didn't approve of the Christmasy undertones in the color scheme, though he supposed it was none of his business, even if he _was_ helping Simon rehearse.

"Simon has developed this worrying friendship with Butters' and Cartman's son," Kyle said.

"Worrying like - gay?"

"No! Not that I'd be - well, yes, I would, but only because he's a Cartman. At any rate, no, apparently they've both very into girls. Bebe caught them looking at certain videos together."

"Ugh, God."

"Yes, precisely. I'm sure it was Lee's influence. He's just like Butters, it's amazing. Acts like an innocent little darling when he's anything but. You don't even want to know what Butters and Cartman were like as kids."

"You're right about that."

"Your father and I were absolutely chaste in comparison. He didn't even kiss me with his tongue until-"

"Dad!"

"Alright, well. You should take comfort in that, though, I think."

Jacob was silent after that, irritated, not because Kyle had dared to mention Stan's tongue but because his own trajectory with Issac was similar: tongues came into play fairly late in the game. There was nothing more depressing to him than the thought that he'd relived his parents' experience of early romance. If he had, he'd at least put a stop to it before it could solidify into fate. He was not Stan and Issac was not Kyle, or vice versa, or anywhere in between. The curse of South Park was not real, and if his heart was still in South Park right now, it was only because the rest of him was.

At the house, he sat in the kitchen drinking egg nog while Kyle made a green bean casserole for the night's dinner at his grandparents' house. Kyle always made something very gentile when it was a pot luck, so that Stan would have a comfort food, and also, probably, to annoy his mother. Stan and Kyle were not practicing Jews or Catholics, though they both had sentimental attachments to the religions they'd grown up with and would admit, if pressed, that they believed in God and all of that. Jacob wasn't sure what he believed. Kenny had been Mormon for a while, or at least very interested in all of the kids giving Mormonism a shot, but the emphasis on marrying and having a ton of kids didn't sit well with Jacob at all.

Stan came home around four o'clock, when Jacob was dozing on the couch, watching a college football pre-game show that was extremely boring. He still wasn't used to the sight of Stan in scrubs instead of the militaristic paramedic uniforms he'd worn until Jacob started high school, when the ambulance Stan was riding in got in a very minor accident that made Kyle flip out and demand that he take up another line of work. Two years before, a guy Stan had been trying to strap onto a gurney bit him on the wrist hard enough to leave a permanent scar, which was perhaps less dramatic but somehow more disturbing. Jacob was glad that Stan had switched to physical therapy, because he seemed to like it better anyway, but the old uniform had been so much cooler.

"Egg nog, awesome," Stan said when he was checking out the contents on the fridge, Kyle still hugged against him in the sort of prolonged reunion thing that they always did; they couldn't stand being apart. It made Jacob feel itchy, afraid that codependency was in his genes. Stan got the egg nog out and poured some for himself, dropped two ice cubes into it, and grabbed the brandy from the top of the fridge.

"Can I have one like that?" Jacob asked, walking into the kitchen to watch him mix his drink.

"No," Kyle said. "You are not getting drunk before you see your grandmother."

"I wouldn't get drunk," Jacob said. "Please, Dad?" Sometimes 'Dad' very obviously meant one of them in particular, and in this case it was Stan.

"He can have a little splash," Stan said. "It's Christmas."

"Oh, God, not for two weeks," Kyle said. "All of December is Christmas to your father," he said to Jacob.

"It's true," Stan said. He mixed Jacob a very weak egg nog with brandy, and added powdered nutmeg before handing it to him. They toasted and drank. "Want one?" Stan asked Kyle.

"I can't," Kyle said. "It's too fattening."

"You need some fattening up," Stan said, slapping Kyle's ass. Kyle scoffed, but he was blushing, flattered. Jacob retreated back to the living room, and Stan joined him after a few minutes of whatever that Jacob had turned up the volume to avoid overhearing.

"What'd you do today?" Stan asked when he dropped onto the sofa beside Jacob.

"Shopped with Dad," Jacob said. "And I saw Christine this morning."

"Yeah? How's she?"

"Still mostly cloistered," Jacob said, because this was their old family joke about Christine, that Kenny would lock her up in a tower if he could. The first time Kyle described her as 'cloistered' Jacob had burst out laughing, because he was eleven and didn't know what the word meant. He'd assumed it was something to do with bodily functions. After laughing along with him, Stan admitted that he wasn't really sure what that meant, either.

"Something to do with nuns, right?" he'd said, and the moment had been officially immortalized, because the combination of nuns and bodily functions had been the height of hilarity for Jacob at the time.

The game was just starting to get good when Kyle asked them to dress for dinner. Jacob had been allowed to drink a beer in addition to his egg nog, and he wondered why he felt so easily drunk until he realized that he hadn't eaten a proper lunch, just snacked on things while Kyle cooked the green beans. He was laughing under his breath as he pulled on clean but wrinkled gray slacks and a dorky navy sweater that had been a gift from Grandma Sheila.

"Oh, you look cute," Kyle said when Jacob came downstairs, yawning. He usually wasn't much of a drinker, but he was feeling celebratory and wanted another beer. He allowed Kyle to roll up the cuffs on his sleeves so they didn't hang over his hands. Stan came downstairs in an untucked Oxford and jeans that Kyle had picked out for him, embarrassingly tight and fashionable in a way that Stan was seemingly oblivious to. Jacob was instructed to carry the green beans out to the car (by Kyle) and to not forget his coat (by Stan). In the car, he was forced to remove his tongue ring, and he slipped it into his front pants pocket, hoping that he'd have a moment alone to model it for Issac.

Because of their loitering in front of the game, they were the last ones to arrive, and it was intimidating to be received by so many Broflovskis at once. While hugging his grandmother, Jacob saw Issac hanging back, and his body did a humiliating full-on flush thing that he hoped Sheila wouldn't notice. Issac had gotten his hair cut, and it was short and spiky the way he'd worn it when he was a sophomore in high school, darkened to a burnt honey color by too much gel. It made him look like he'd – petulantly, intentionally – returned to the age when he'd finally persuaded Jacob to throw all caution to the wind, that year when Issac sobbed and talked about believing in God again because Jacob had done him so right.

"I guess you don't need me to do it, then," Jacob said when he'd finally worked his way across the room to Issac, who was wearing a gray t-shirt that was tight across his scrawny chest and jeans that were too big for him, sagging in a particular way that made Jacob suspect that Issac might have stolen them from him at some point, years ago.

"Do what?" Issac asked, obviously still rankled.

"Your hair," Jacob said. "Who cut it?"

"Some guy. My mom took me to her salon." Issac was eating cheese straws and his breath was terrible, but Jacob still wanted to kiss him.

"I, um." Jacob felt more drunk than he was, pop quizzed by Issac's cold stare. Issac looked like he'd chewed on his lips during the car ride over, probably on purpose, to make them fat and pink. "How was your day?" Jacob asked.

"Shitty," Issac said.

"How come?"

Issac huffed and walked away. Jacob let him go, but only because Sydney had appeared at his shoulder, grinning and ready to interview him about college. She had a massive mane of frizzy blond hair that she'd let go wild in the past year or so, but its wildness complimented her delicate features, and her high school boyfriend, one of the Stoley boys, had already proposed to her. She'd turned him down after some negotiations with her parents, which had resulted in her getting a car of her own and still being allowed to wear the promise ring he'd given her, just not on the finger that made it official.

"Zach is being more bitchy than usual," Sydney said when she saw Jacob's eyes wandering to Issac. Jacob flinched at the nickname; all of Issac's siblings called him this, and he'd never approved.

"It's the hair, probably," Jacob said. "He misses that green shit hanging off like rotting seaweed."

"He misses you," Sydney said. She made a pouty face to offset the seriousness of this and punched Jacob's arm. "You could have gone to school in Denver, man."

"I'm not his babysitter," Jacob said. "And not everyone from this town is destined to stay here forever, okay?"

"Lighten up," Sydney said. "It's Christmas."

"Not for two weeks."

"You know what I mean."

At dinner, they all sat at the same long table that was really meant for ten. There were eleven "major Broflovskis," as Issac referred to them, and he included Jacob and Stan in this, though Jacob considered himself more of a Marsh, even though his legal name was hyphenated. He would have been more sensitive about this if he felt that Kyle would be offended, but Kyle considered himself more of a Marsh as well, and had in fact changed his name when he married Stan in a courthouse in New York. This was after Stan quit the Cavaliers and showed up at Kyle's dorm room to get down on one knee and tell him that he couldn't live without him, not even temporarily. It was all very romantic and spontaneous, the name change included. Professionally, Kyle still went by Broflovski, but whenever he had something monogrammed, which was not infrequent, he used the initials KBM.

"So tell us everything about college," Sheila said to Jacob while they ate. "Maybe you can inspire your cousin to get cracking on his applications."

"He's been cracking," Bebe said, a little tightly, and Jacob saw his Uncle Ike give her a consoling smile.

"Stop talking about my crack, guys," Issac said. Simon and Gwen laughed, under their breath, afraid of their grandmother. Gwen was Bebe and Ike's youngest, by far the sweetest and most well-behaved of their four children. She was also the most awkward-looking, and the most awkward in general, but she was Uncle Ike's clear favorite.

"College is going good," Jacob said when his grandmother stared him down.

"Well," she corrected.

"Oh - well-"

"He's doing extremely well," Kyle said. "We're so proud of him."

The conversation moved on to a discussion of Sydney's holiday choir concert, and Jacob was grateful, increasingly sober and half-hard under the table. Issac was sitting across from him and eating a dinner roll in a deliberately seductive fashion, tearing off little bits of it and placing them on the tip of his tongue before curling them into his mouth and chewing slowly. Jacob kept trying to meet his eyes and failing.

"And how's your sister, Stanley?" Sheila asked.

"Shelly's good," Stan said, probably on purpose. Jacob smiled down at his mashed potatoes. It was unsettling to think that his aunt Shelly was his mother, biologically. She lived in Utah with her husband and children, and Jacob usually only saw her once a year, when they went to visit during the summer. He was always allowed to bring Issac with him, because he didn't get along with either of Shelly's sons, who were technically his half-brothers, which was weird. They were both brawny meatheads with bad skin, and Jacob had been so in love with Issac last summer when they went to Shelly's together, because Issac was Jacob's intellectual ally against his not-brothers, and because he was such a pretty little thing compared to them, more clearly special than he seemed back in South Park. This was what Jacob feared most about having Issac at college with him: he would make Jacob hate everyone else, all the normal kids, because they wouldn't measure up.

After dinner, everyone migrated to either the kitchen to help with cleanup or to the sofa to watch the game. Jacob's parents were both in the kitchen, Kyle at the sink and Stan helping Sydney load the dishwasher, so Jacob figured his family had offered enough tributes. He waited until Issac headed for the upstairs bathroom, and followed him up when he heard the toilet flush. He knew Issac only opted for the upstairs one so that he could have the pleasure of rejecting him, but Jacob had a secret weapon, and also a plan that he thought might fix everything.

"Let me show you something," he said when he caught Issac at the top of the stairs, taking his elbow.

"Seen it," Issac said, pulling free. "Thanks anyway."

"Trust me, you haven't seen this," Jacob said. He walked backward toward the guest room where the coats were piled on Kyle's childhood bed. Issac raised his eyebrows.

"There is nothing on you, anywhere, that I haven't seen a million times," he said.

"Not true," Jacob said. "C'mere."

Issac followed him into the bedroom, and Jacob didn't bother to shut the door. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the tongue stud, closing it into his fist so that Issac wouldn't see it. He'd only put it in without a mirror a couple of times, but he felt like he could use Issac as his mirror now. He stuck out his tongue and unscrewed the fastener on the little barbell before bringing it up and pushing it in. Issac watched, quiet but obviously surprised, his eyebrows lifted.

"Fuck," Jacob said, though it came out sounding more like 'thduck,' because he was still holding out his tongue, trying to screw the fastener on to the bottom of the barbell and failing miserably. Issac sighed as if this was all very typical and unceremoniously reached into Jacob's mouth to take the fastener from his slippery fingers. Jacob titled his head back so Issac could see what he was doing.

"Thanks," Jacob said when the barbell was in place. He was blushing, stupidly. Issac wasn't, but he seemed more willing to look at Jacob than he had all night. "I thought I could return the favor," Jacob said when Issac continued to stare at him in silence. "Maybe not tonight, if you're still pissed off at me. But sometime before the New Year."

"You got your tongue pierced so you could return the favor?" Issac said.

"Well, yeah. And, just, I thought it looked cool. On you. So."

Issac sighed and walked to the window. He normally had less willpower than Jacob, who didn't have much, so even this minimal resistance was unusual. Jacob stood in the middle of the room, feeling like an idiot, his tongue throbbing a little from the reintroduction of the barbell.

"Shut the door," Issac said.

"Yeah?" Jacob wanted him bad, on top of the coats, anywhere. He did as Issac asked and walked over to stand beside him. "So," he said, fidgeting like they were strangers cruising each other in a men's room. "Door's closed."

Issac turned to him and lifted his shirt, pulling it all the way up to his collarbone so that Jacob could see his new piercings. The nipple rings weren't rings so much as little silver horseshoes with balls on the ends. Jacob let out a long breath, nodding to himself. Issac's nipples were dark pink and stiff, and Jacob wanted his mouth everywhere, but he never made the first move.

"Are they still sore?" Jacob asked, his pants getting tighter with every shallow breath he pushed out.

"A little," Issac said. He touched his left nipple and made a soft noise, rubbing his fingertip around the piercing and over the tip.

"Jesus, fuck," Jacob said, whispering. Issac shoved him when he swooned closer, and he let his shirt drop down to hide his chest again.

"Oh, sorry, was I stalking you just then?" Issac said. "Forgive me."

"Dude." Jacob moaned, too fogged with lust to remember the real reason why he'd come up here. "You look so good. Your hair, those - things. You look _so_ good."

Issac smiled despite himself, but he pushed Jacob farther away.

"You just want easily accessible ass," Issac said. "I can't believe you got your tongue done," he added, more quietly, as if to counter his own accusation.

"I don't actually want ass," Jacob said, though he did, so badly that his knees were shaking. "I wanted to give you a proposal."

"Well," Issac said. "Better get down on one knee, then."

Jacob did without hesitation, and Issac laughed, loud and nervous. His hand was shaking when Jacob took it, and Jacob hoped he didn't think this was some sort of actual marriage proposal, though he was pretty sure Issac wasn't that dumb, or that hopeful. Jacob thought of his parents, Stan on one knee in the hallway of Kyle's dorm, exhausted, ring-less, and begging for something he already had.

"Here's what I think," Jacob said, pressing Issac's hand flat between his. "Until the end of the year, while I'm home, we go on like we always have. Because I love the way we are. I mean, the way we've always been. I love you," he added, sheepishly, and Issac's lips parted, but he said nothing.

"But then we have to do a test," Jacob said. "A science experiment. I don't want us to be just part of the South Park curse. I don't want to do things exactly like my folks did. I need to _know_, Ike. I want to always feel like I did after, you know. Our first time. Like I was going to die if I ever had to let you go."

"I always feel that way," Issac said angrily, and Jacob shook his head.

"I know I piss you off," he said. "Like this morning. I know you think I'm arrogant and selfish sometimes. You need to let yourself imagine that there might be someone out there who's better for you. Even if you think there probably isn't, 'cause I think I'd probably be happy with you for the rest of my life, but that scares the fuck out of me. I don't want to just assume. I want to find out."

"What's your experiment?" Issac asked flatly. "You want me to get fucked by a lot of other guys?"

"No." Jacob stood, still holding Issac's hand, curling it into a fist between his palms. "I fucking hate the thought of you with someone else. But we have to go off and have our own lives for a while. We can still talk, but we have to apart for long enough that it doesn't feel normal to suck each other off between dinner and dessert at Grandma's. You have to get the hell out of South Park, dude. Fuck Tire World. You're smart, you know you can get into any school you want with your test scores. You could go to school in another country, you could go anywhere. And that's what I think you should do, and after we're done with school, we should meet somewhere, and then we'll know. We'll really know if we're, like. Soul mates."

Issac was quiet, and Jacob listened to his own breath, which was coming fast, from emotion and arousal, though the latter had faded somewhat.

"But," Issac said, and he left it at that, staring at Jacob's chest. Jacob pulled Issac to him, hugging him, his head dropping to Issac's shoulder.

"I know," Jacob said. "But listen. When we meet up, if you still – if I still. If it still feels like it does now, I swear to you, I fucking promise, we'll never be apart again. That's the deal."

"I've just always had you," Issac said. He clawed his hands into the back of Jacob's sweater and released a choppy breath against his neck. "I was breathing your leftover air when I was still, like, a _bean_."

Jacob laughed and squeezed him closer. He didn't want to let him go. The thought of Issac - his Issac! - out in the world, untethered, was terrible. But it was the only way they'd know for sure. They had to lose each other. Neither of them could leave South Park unless both of them did.

Issac leaned back to look at him, and Jacob knew he should send him downstairs before their absence became any more incriminating, but Issac seemed to need kissing and Jacob had never wanted anything more than the taste of that fucking dinner roll on Issac's hot mouth. They kissed softly, licking just the tips of each other's tongues, both of them mindful of how badly things would play out if their piercings were to tangle together.

"Go downstairs," Jacob said, whispering this against Issac's lips.

"Do you promise-" Issac said, panting. "Until the end of the year-?"

"I promise," Jacob said. "I've got my car here." Saying so, he knew why it had been so important to drive instead of fly. "I'll come get you later." He pushed his hands up under Issac's shirt, and Issac shivered when Jacob's fingers brushed the nipple piercings.

"And after this fucking experiment," Issac said. "Later, when we're older. Where should we meet? After we've graduated or whatever your fucking deadline is?"

"After we've both finished school," Jacob said, nodding, because that would be an incentive for Issac to stick with it. "We'll meet up, um. I don't know, you pick the place."

"General Sherman," Issac said, and Jacob wasn't surprised. It was where they'd had their first kiss, in Sequoia National Park, at the foot of the biggest tree in the world. They'd gone camping there with their families, and there was still snow on the ground, though it was early June. Everyone was miserable except Stan and Bebe, who shared his love of hiking. Jacob was thirteen, antsy and afraid of the bears they kept spotting off in the distance. Issac was twelve, a sarcastic bastard who complained nonstop, but something about the giant trees had shut him up. On the morning they reached the General Sherman tree, Issac had shot forward and Jacob raced after him, around the side of giant trunk. Issac had always been faster, and when Jacob caught him it was only because Issac wanted him to. They fell against the tree and kissed; there was no way to tell whose decision it was. It had felt mutual, and ended too fast, when the other kids ran around to join them.

Jacob headed downstairs a few minutes after Issac, but nobody seemed to notice their strategic reemergence. Stan and Kyle usually wanted to leave early, and tonight was no exception, to Jacob's relief. Later, he would go out again with Issac, to no place in particular. Maybe he'd bring Issac back to his bed, in through the window, and spend the whole night doing nothing more than sucking on his sore little nipples. He was confident that he could make Issac come just from that, and he was foggy again on the ride back to his parents' house, his erection concealed by a paper plate piled with leftovers and covered with aluminum foil, leaving grease spots on his slacks.

"Issac looks so much better with his hair fixed," Kyle remarked at one point during his and Stan's recap of the evening. "He seemed calmer. Don't you think? Only one joke about his ass crack in front of my mother. A record low."

"He's fine," Stan said. "He's a good kid."

"He told Bunny that he wanted to apply to Michigan State!"

"Oh," Stan said. "Hmm."

"You guys still call me Bunny?" Jacob said, definitely not in the mood to discuss Issac's future with them.

"Only to each other," Kyle said. "We stopped saying it to your face when you were, what? Eleven? Per your request."

"It is important to honor your child's emergent self identity by respecting their feelings about nicknames," Stan said, quoting Kyle like he was reading from one of his books. Kyle snorted and reached over to squeeze Stan's thigh. Jacob looked out the window and thought about what Issac had said to him this morning, that he loved it when Jacob called him Ike. He'd said that before, and had explained that he liked it mostly because Jacob was the only one who called him that.

"I'm someone else when I'm with you," he'd said, about this, once. "Like this genie who came out of a bottle."

"Like I'm your master?" Jacob had said. This had been last summer, in Utah, when they were cuddling after fooling around.

"No," Issac said. "I just mean - you make me feel like I can grant wishes. Like I've got this power." He'd dropped off there, blushing. Jacob hadn't needed any further explanation. He knew exactly what Issac meant.

By the time they got home Jacob was half asleep and no longer hard, his semi crushed by leftovers. He sloped into the house with his parents and developed a second wind when Stan started mixing egg nog again. They all had one this time, with twice the brandy that Stan used earlier, and Jacob wondered if he'd have to walk to Issac's later.

"You put that thing back in," Kyle said, meaning the tongue ring.

"Grandma didn't even notice," Jacob said.

"Lucky you," said Stan. "Did you show Issac?"

"Yes." Jacob blushed and drank more.

"What'd he have to say about it?" Stan asked.

Jacob sort of wanted to tell them, though it was especially pointless, on the cusp of their hiatus: _well_, _mostly_ _he_ _was_ _concerned_ _that_ _if_ _he_ _shoved_ _his_ _tongue_ _into_ _my_ _mouth_ _too_ _deeply_ _we_ _might_ _end_ _up_ _being_ _one_ _of_ _those_ _horror_ _stories_ _you_ _tell_ _people_ _about_ _tongue_ _piercings_.

"He was impressed," Jacob said.

"You'd do well not to try to impress that kid too often," Kyle said.

Jacob thought it was probably too late for that. He was already thinking about four years from now and what might happen at the base of General Sherman. They would go in summer, maybe, in August, the snow long gone. They would wait until sunset when the crowds had thinned, and they would know the verdict as soon as they laid eyes on each other.

He had another egg nog with his parents and they all got a little drunk.

"Remember that trip to the sequoias?" Jacob asked, eying the clock on the oven. It was close to ten o'clock. Issac would be waiting for him, but he wasn't the only one Jacob had missed, and he didn't want to leave his parents yet.

"I remember it was fucking freezing," Kyle said. "And we had to walk from one end of the earth to the other."

"That trip was awesome," Stan said. "One of my favorite national parks, God. It's so amazing, like another world. You had fun, right?" he said to Jacob, squeezing his shoulder.

"I did, yeah." After getting kissed by Issac, he'd spent the rest of the trip in a kind of pleasant haze. At one point, Stan had flipped out over seeing some rare woodpecker. It was one of Jacob's most vivid memories of his parents: Stan flailing as quietly as possible, so as not to scare the bird, and pausing in his attempts to take a decent picture of it to beam at Kyle, who could have given a damn about woodpeckers, trees, hiking, and spending his vacation in the kind of dirty, heaping snow that had finally melted back home. Kyle had smiled tiredly at Stan, letting Stan take his hand and shake his arm with excitement. Jacob had wondered if the woodpecker would even mean anything to Stan if he hadn't been able to turn and know that Kyle had seen it, too. He tried to explain this to Issac years later when they were reminiscing about the trip. It had been one of those afternoons when Issac was zoning out and hardly seemed to be listening, but a few weeks later he got a text message from Issac, who was on vacation with his family in New York for the week:

_seeing all kinds of rare woodpeckers today. without you they don't count. come with next time. fuck basketball. think of the woodpeckers, j. think of the woodpeckers we're both missing out on._

* * *

><p>When Kenny took a turn for the worse, half of South Park showed up in the third floor waiting room of Hell's Pass, and most of them stayed past evening and on into the wee hours of the morning, slumped onto each other like refugees in the uncomfortable chairs. Christine and Wendy did their best to keep the others from crowding Kenny's bed after visiting hours ended, though of course he loved the company and wanted his farewell party to be as well-attended as possible. Selfishly, Wendy and Christine wanted more time alone with him, and even Clint's sudden interest in their father was wearing on Christine by his second day in town.<p>

"What does everyone want for breakfast?" Clint around around six o'clock in the morning. Christine winced at the volume of his voice. He was an actor, just starting to have some modest success at thirty-five, and she suspected his artfully distressed jeans cost a thousand dollars or more.

"Well, let's see," Kenny said, surprising everyone, because he'd seemed to be sleeping, or just knocked out by his morphine drip. "You think I could eat an egg McMuffin?" he asked Wendy, who was in bed with him, stretched out along his side.

"You could try," she said. She wasn't normally so indulgent of him or anyone, and Christine had expected her to continue waging war on Kenny's illness the way she had when he first got sick, but she seemed resigned now. She kept giving Kenny long looks, like she wanted to ask him a question but couldn't figure out how to word it.

"McDonalds, then!" Clint said, manic with enthusiasm; he clapped his hands together. "Christie? Mom? What can I get for you?"

"Coffee," Christine said. She hated McDonalds, and the way Clint was looking at her, like he'd asked her to remind him what his next line was. "And, um. Anything that comes on a bagel."

"Mommy?" Clint said, going to Wendy.

"Oh, nothing." Her chin was on Kenny's shoulder, and though she was sixty-eight years old she was holding on to him in the shameless way a teenager might clutch at her boyfriend while they watched movies on her parents' couch.

"Eat something," Kenny said, nudging her with his nose.

"Do you think they have a yogurt parfait?" Wendy asked.

"I'm sure they do," Clint said. "Okay, egg McMuffin, coffee, something on a bagel, yogurt parfait. Got it."

"You should ask everyone out there if they want anything," Wendy said, sitting up. "That would be nice of you."

"Mom, there are like twenty people out there," Christine said, starting to feel bad for Clint.

"I can do it!" Clint said. His guilt about having been away so much for the past fifteen years was manifesting as a lot of errand-doing, though of course there was nothing, finally, that any of them could do for Kenny. "It's no problem," Clint said, backing toward the door. "I'll just, um. Does anyone have something I can write with?"

He left, and Wendy went to search the halls for a nurse to administer more morphine. Christine went to the attached bathroom and wet the cloth that she'd begged from a nurse a few hours ago. Kenny smiled at her when she cleaned his cheeks and forehead. He seemed peaceful, even amused, as if this death business was just another party he was throwing, an excuse for all his old friends to get together and hang around.

"You okay?" He kept asking Christine this, like she was the one who was dying.

"I'm fine, Daddy," she said. She wasn't fine. She felt lost, and like the world without him wouldn't be real enough to mean anything. "I slept for a few hours. Do you want some chapstick? Your lips look dry."

"Do they?" Kenny pressed them together. "I'm pretty high, I think. A little numb. What flavors do you have?"

"Only one flavor," Christine said. She went to her purse to dig her tube of chapstick out. "Pineapple."

"Ooh, sounds good. I'll take it."

He seemed to want to put it on himself, but he was too weak to hold anything without dropping it, so she did it for him. Halfway through doing so she wondered if this was embarrassing for him, but he rubbed his lips together and gave her an appreciative smile when she was done.

"Delicious," he said.

"You're hungry?" she said, because it didn't really make sense, considering everything his body was going through.

"No, not at all. I meant the smell."

"Oh. Well. I thought you wanted an egg McMuffin, though?"

"I do. It's for your mom, really. She loves them. We used to eat them together on the way to school when we were kids. Fuck this yogurt parfait bullshit. Life's too short for a yogurt parfait."

"Ha." Christine didn't want to talk about life and its shortness, not with him or anyone else. It seemed ludicrous that he could be dying at sixty-nine. He looked maybe fifty, and this only in the past year, since he'd gotten sick. Christine had always operated under the belief that her father was immortal, and she supposed most people felt this way as children, but her delusions about his indestructibility had persisted into adulthood.

"Is everybody really still out there?" Kenny asked.

"They really are." Her father was a beloved figure in South Park, to the point that Christine and Wendy had somewhat deliriously wondered if statuary would be erected after he died. Kenny still went to the public library every day, and it had become a kind of meeting place for his friends after they all began to retire, where they would play cards, drink coffee, and talk about the old days. It was too depressing to think of how the others would go on this way without him; they wouldn't, probably. He was a mascot they all rallied around, the glue that kept them together.

"Even Stan?" Kenny said when Christine sat on his bed again. "He hates hospitals."

"That's a funny thing for a physical therapist to hate," Christine said. Stan Marsh had been a paramedic, once, too. She remembered him coming to her school in his uniform, making the kids laugh and groan with gross stories about what happened if you ran with scissors and so forth. "But yeah, Dad, Stan's out there. Of course he's out there."

"And Kyle?"

"What a question! When's the last time they were apart?"

Kenny closed his eyes and grinned as if she'd said something funny. "I should tell you a story about that," he said. "I've always wanted to tell someone. I started to tell your mom a few times, but then I would think, she's taken a lot on faith already, hasn't she?"

"Are you okay?" Christine asked, because he was starting to ramble, his eyes still closed. "Do you feel dehydrated?" She looked at the IV of fluids that he was plugged into as if it would tell her anything.

"I'm okay," he said. He took her hand, or more like flopped his against hers so that she would hold it. She did, rubbing his knuckles. "I should tell you," he said again, more quietly now, his eyes coming open. "I've been thinking for a long time that none of it mattered, but it did. It's part of what we all are, somehow. Maybe just part of who I am."

Christine's heart sped up, and she was afraid that she was about to hear some deathbed confession about infidelity. Her mother returned with a nurse before he could say any more, and Christine muttered about needing air. She hated to see the nurses fussing over her father, adjusting wires and administering drugs that would ease the way as his illness nudged him out of the world. She went out into the waiting room, and everyone there looked up from whatever they were pretending to read and stared at her as if she'd have news.

"Clint is bringing breakfast," Christine announced, though they'd already know that, since he'd taken orders. There was a kind of lightening of the air in the room as everyone acknowledged this for what it was: a tactful way of saying that it wasn't yet the time to file into the room and have their last words with Kenny.

She stood surveying them, wondering what they'd all asked Clint to bring them to eat. Stan and Kyle were in the back left corner, Kyle still mostly asleep on Stan's shoulder, blinking groggily while Stan stroked his hair. They'd probably asked for bacon, egg and cheese biscuits, hash browns, and possibly pancakes, too. When Sheila Broflovski died Kyle had gained twenty pounds, something Christine's mother had endlessly remarked upon, and Stan always ate a lot anyway. Issac was beside them, distracted by his handheld. He was still skinny and essentially adolescent, though his hairline was receding quite dramatically as he neared forty. He was a celebrated orthopedic surgeon who specialized in delicate robotic hand bones that could function along with an organic nervous system, and because he'd had a role in inventing the technology he was apparently very wealthy. He still dressed like a punk kid, in a flannel shirt with rolled up sleeves and jeans that were frayed at the bottom in a not stylish way. He'd probably just asked for coffee. Jacob's absence was conspicuous, and Christine imagined that he'd been sent off to find Issac something very particular to eat, like a plum, or a chicken salad sandwich on a croissant.

Butters was the only member of the Cartman clan who had stayed the whole night, though Emma had promised to come back in the morning after Ian left for school. Christine suspected Eric Cartman would be back, too, to exchange a final round of affectionate insults with her dad before he lost his favorite rival. Emma claimed that their animosity stemmed from the fact that Eric had viewed Kenny as a competitor for the romantic attentions of Butters when they were young, which was as hilarious as it was disturbing. Christine was irritated with Eric for outliving her father. He'd had several heart surgeries, and the second of which accompanied a genuine near-death scare. Kenny had rarely left the hospital during the whole ordeal, mostly for Butters' sake, though Christine got the feeling that Kenny and Eric were something more like actual friends after the whole thing was over. She was sure that Butters had thanked Clint but asked for nothing. He always demurred every favor his friends offered, and only Kenny was determined enough to simply do things for him without asking.

Ike and Bebe were sitting closest to the hallway that led to Kenny's room, and they both smiled at Christine gamely. They had been like an aunt and uncle to her when she was growing up, but she hadn't seen them much since she'd moved back to South Park. Ike was one of the library gang who played cards with Kenny, and she supposed he must attend the later rounds, since he was still working. He'd taken over as Principal of South Park Elementary following the retirement of Principal Tucker, who was also in the waiting room, tending to Tweek.

Tweek was a wreck, fidgeting and jiggling his knee like a nervous kid, a cup of coffee hugged between his palms. Kenny had always seemed to feel a sort of responsibility toward Tweek, and Christine remembered him saying that he had to 'check up on Tweek' whenever she'd tagged along with Kenny on visits to the library as a child. Back then, she'd thought of Tweek as a kind of mystical creature who lived among the bookshelves, and it was strange to see him out in the real world; he'd declined every invitation to dinner that Kenny had offered over the years, because Craig didn't like seeing the kids he reigned over in social settings. Craig still managed a somewhat frightening presence, sitting stick-straight despite the long hours in the chair, his arm clamped around Tweek's trembling shoulders. Christine wondered if Clint had been brave enough to ask Principal Tucker what he wanted from McDonalds. She was certain Craig would have sneered at the suggestion of fast food.

There were others: Sydney Broflovski and Clyde Donovan, Christine's aunt Karen and her grandma Carol, who was still in relatively good health at eighty-seven, as if all of that vodka had partially embalmed her. Tired of trying to guess which McDonalds breakfast foods these people would have asked for, Christine walked down toward the ladies restroom, though she didn't really need to use it. She planned on splashing some water on her face, but stopped and headed down to the end of the corridor when she saw Jacob leaning on the windowsill and looking out at the sunrise.

"Hey," Christine said, coming up behind him. She leaned against his back and closed her eyes for a moment, exhausted.

"Everything okay?" Jacob asked, meaning Kenny. He reached back to hook his arm across her waist, holding her there, and she thought of her father's vigilance in making sure they had never been left alone behind a closed door for too long as kids. It had been funny to them then, and it was still funny. She thought of Jacob not just as a brother but as a kind of twin, a helpful additional limb that she sometimes had to function without.

"Dad's fine," Christine said, though of course he wasn't. "He's tripping already, and they're giving him more drugs. He started to tell me something about the past. I think it might have been fairly horrible. I escaped, is that awful?"

"No," Jacob said. "And he wouldn't have told you something horrible. What made you think that?"

"Nothing, never mind. What are you doing down here by yourself? Are they all driving you crazy?"

"Not really." Jacob pulled her over to lean against his side. "Ike wanted Harbucks, but they don't open for thirty minutes. I'm just killing time."

"Little Ike or Big Ike?" Christine asked, though she knew which one he was talking about.

"Little Ike," Jacob said, still staring out the window. "My Ike."

"I figured." Christine wasn't sure that she completely understood what was going on there anymore, and she often wondered which other family members had and hadn't caught on over the years. It wasn't something that was talked about, and Jacob no longer confided in her about it, which made her sad, though she was also relieved to no longer bear the burden of knowing everything. She had been thirteen when Jacob returned from a family road trip to California and told her that Issac had kissed him. Christine had been furious, ready to report Issac to their parents for this degradation of her beloved Jacob, but Jacob had grabbed both of her wrists, yanked her forward and stared at her with his eyes blown open, only a faint edge of self-hatred in his tone when he told her that he'd _liked_ it. A lot.

"Are you guys staying in separate bedrooms?" she asked, not in the mood for walking on eggshells for anybody.

"We're staying with my parents," Jacob said. "And no, not separate."

"Oh. So they're. Okay with things?"

"They love Issac now," Jacob said, dodging the question. "Now that he's rich," he added, and Christine knew he was mostly talking about Kyle. Stan Marsh loved everyone, as far as she could tell. She'd once seen him sincerely apologize to a moth.

"I'm surprised Issac's okay with missing work," Christine said.

"Don't be," Jacob said. "He loves your dad."

"I know." She remembered her father taking a particular interest in Issac when he left school at sixteen. Kenny had sometimes seemed to suggest that he and Issac had this in common, though Kenny had been a good student. He claimed his performance in school was only a symptom of courting Wendy, and Christine once had to stop herself from making a joke about how lusting after Jacob hadn't brought Issac similar academic success.

"It's strange, everybody being together again like this," Jacob said. "And we're all, you know. Making chit chat. Not really talking about why."

"Well, there's not much to say about why." She didn't want to talk about it herself. "You know, the only one who really cheers me up is Emma, because she's so inappropriate. She was talking about setting me up with some friend of hers – that weird French guy who's always hanging around her."

"God, really?" Jacob frowned. "You know, everyone thinks she cheats on Lee with that guy."

"Do they? Jesus, who knows what goes on with them. All the Cartmans are so strange. Anyway, she wouldn't tell me how old he was, but he looks ten years younger than me—"

"Please," Jacob said. "You don't look your age. You're like Kenny, you're ageless."

They let that drop between them, and Jacob put an arm around her. "Did you tell Phil about your dad?" he asked.

"No." She hadn't talked to her ex-husband in three years and didn't see why he should know that her father was dying. Phil was her failed experiment, an attempt at having a life that wasn't centered on South Park, which Jacob had always claimed to want, too, before he reunited with Issac and became his "roommate" in an apartment in Denver. They claimed Denver didn't count, but it completely did, and they were in South Park all the time, looking after Stan and Kyle now that those two were old enough to need someone to clean their gutters and unload the massive pallet of firewood that they bought at the start of winter. Jacob seemed happy, and Issac was smug with victory. He'd gotten bold, at least when his parents weren't looking, and was always brushing eyelashes from Jacob's cheeks like he was polishing a medal he'd won.

"So are you going to date the French guy?" Jacob asked. Christine recoiled.

"Of course not," she said. "I'm still vulnerable to the curse."

"I think only virgins are."

"Well. Even so." She wasn't a virgin, but she wasn't sure that she'd ever really been in love. She'd always sort of held herself back from Phil, and she hated to think that it was because she'd never managed to fully trust someone who wasn't from home. Phil had dreaded visits to South Park, and she had felt badly for him, because he'd been so easily excluded when she was back among her family and friends. It hadn't been that way when they'd visited Phil's family in Newport; she'd gotten along better with his mother than he had.

At six thirty they walked down to the Harbucks counter in the lobby, and they ran into Clint on the way there. He was laboring under the weight of everyone's breakfast, and Christine felt more tenderly toward him than she had in years as she watched him struggling to juggle two coffee trays and three heaving bags of greasy food. She hurried to help him, leaving Jacob to fetch Issac's coffee.

"They recognized me at the McDonalds," Clint said. "I had to take a picture with the cashier, and then they brought the manager out, and I had to take one with him, too."

"You're famous," Christine said. "They'll have to redo the Welcome to South Park sign. 'Home of Clinton McCormick.'"

"They didn't know my real name or anything. They called me Owen. 'Hey, it's Owen from Triage.' I get that in L.A., too."

"Poor Clint."

"I'm not complaining! I'm just saying. Nobody knows who Clinton McCormick is. They know Owen. Did anything happen with Dad while I was gone?"

"Don't you think I would have opened with that if something had?" She felt bad for being sarcastic; she felt she hadn't seen her brother in a long time, though he'd made an appearance at Christmas. "I've been hanging out with Jacob for the past ten minutes," she said. "I guess McDonalds coffee wasn't good enough for Dr. Broflovski."

"Issac's a prick," Clint said. "He said, 'Why McDonalds?' So I bitch slapped him with, 'Because it's what my dad wants.' Then he asked for hash browns. That guy has no shame. Is he still, uh. Him and Jacob?"

"You know about that?" Christine said, stopping in her tracks. They were close to the waiting room but still not in earshot. Clint frowned.

"Mom acts like everybody knows," he said. "It's pretty sick, isn't it?"

"It's not really," Christine said. "They're not – I mean, they don't have the same blood or anything."

"Yeah, but they both – Bebe gave birth to both of them, yeah? They stewed in the same juices."

"Clint, God! That's disgusting."

"Disgusting but true," he said, looking proud of himself, and she was back to being annoyed by him.

The distraction of the food and non-hospital-brewed coffee was welcome, and there was a lot of noise and shuffling of bags and wrappers as everyone situated themselves, sorting through McMuffins and McBiscuits until they all had what they'd asked for, more or less. Christine took Jacob's empty seat beside Issac, and she pulled Jacob's discarded fleece sweatshirt on, because she knew it would irritate Issac.

"You okay?" Issac asked.

"Not especially," Christine said. "How are you?"

"Is there really nothing that can be done?" Issac asked. "I have a friend who specializes in—"

"There's really nothing," Christine said, insulted. "We've exhausted the resources of the medical community, believe me. We might not be as rich as you—"

"Oh, God." Issac sat back and huffed, looking away.

"But my parents do have money, okay, and every desperate effort was made."

"Well, of course, but I hate just sitting here, doing nothing." Issac looked down at his hands. "Your father was the only one who didn't treat me like a leper when I quit school. I used to hang out in the library with him and Tweek, after Jacob left for college. He taught me how to play poker."

"My dad?"

"Yeah."

Christine reached over to pat Issac's wrist, hoping that he wouldn't find the gesture condescending. They had never gotten along, too directly in competition for Jacob's attention as kids. Christine had listened to many rants about Issac over the years, and she imagined that he'd heard some about her.

"How's your mom this morning?" Stan asked Christine, and she was embarrassed to realize that he'd overheard her bitchy exchange with Issac. Kyle at least seemed oblivious: he was eating his McDonalds pancakes with dire concentration, sectioning them into bite sized pieces with a knife and fork. He looked very tired.

"Mom's okay," Christine said. "She just seems dazed, like she's run out of energy. I think she expects to go with him—" Christine broke off there, not wanting to give the impression that she thought her mother would actually kill herself or anything. It was just that she'd never before seen her mother not leading the way with her father happily following.

"Poor Wendy," Stan said, and he clasped Kyle's arm as if he was afraid he'd catch the dead spouse disease just by invoking her name. Kyle looked up at him, chewing.

"I think I'd expect to go with you," he said, apparently listening after all. Stan looked at him sadly and touched his cheek. They were both in good health, and Christine doubted that they'd given much thought to that inevitable parting until now. Jacob appeared with two coffees, and Issac hopped out of his chair, went to him and hugged him fervently in front of everyone. Christine met Jacob's eyes over Issac's shoulder and grinned; he seemed confused, and couldn't properly hug back with the coffees in his hands. She checked for Stan and Kyle's reaction, because she'd always been curious about their opinions on this and knew she would never hear them aloud. Kyle was watching the two of them but still mostly looking tired, still chewing. Stan was gazing at Kyle, and he seemed broken up, as if he was trying to imagine life without him.

They were all cleaning their hands with pale yellow napkins and gathering up the trash when the nurse came in with Wendy, whose eyes were red and wet.

"Mr. McCormick can have visitors now," the nurse said. She had the fleshy, scrubbed-clean skin that all the younger nurses seemed to have, whereas the older ones were strung out and leathery. "It will be the last time he'll have visitors," the nurse added, and her lack of intonation actually seemed kind, or respectful. Christine stood, then realized that this wasn't her cue. She would be close to the end of the line, one of the three people who wouldn't leave the room until he was gone.

She went into the room anyway, along with her mother, who held her hand. Clint trailed behind them, sobbing in pathetic little gasps. Kenny was smiling and heavy-lidded, high as a kite. They crowded around him while the others lingered outside, trying to compose themselves.

"Did Mom eat her egg McMuffin?" Christine asked, taking her father's hand and holding it. He laughed in a little cough and nodded.

"My dying wish," he said, turning to Wendy. She was stone-faced, holding Clint while he cried.

"Dad," Clint said. He was still having trouble actually looking at Kenny, clinging to their mother in a way that made Christine think of how Disney World had somehow managed to terrify him. He'd come out of the place with a sudden tendency to nervously suck on his thumb.

"C'mere, it's okay," Kenny said, and Clint hugged him, spilling onto Kenny's chest in a way that made Christine want to caution him not to hurt Kenny in his enthusiasm, though she supposed the time to keep him from hurting was done, the morphine so heavy in his bloodstream that he must have felt he was floating.

Christine and Clint hung back while Wendy played usher, bringing Butters in first. Making no attempt to conceal his tears, Butters hurried to the bed and dropped down onto Kenny the way that Clint had, sobbing into the crook of Kenny's neck. Eric Cartman trailed in behind him, timidly meeting Kenny's eyes from over Butters' head.

"I heard I made it just in time," Cartman said.

"You always had great timing," Kenny said. "Hey, hey," he said to Butters, nuzzling at his hair, which was fluffy and white like a spoiled Pomeranian's fur. "It's okay," Kenny said, almost admonishing him. Butters lifted his face and sniffled.

"You're my best friend," Butters said, also admonishing, giving Kenny a reason why he couldn't die.

"We'll see each other again," Kenny said. "I promise. Don't worry about me. I've done this before."

He turned to Christine and Clint and winked, as if they would know what that meant. Christine looked at her brother, but he was just blubbering, his somewhat famous face pinched with ugly tears. She hugged him and watched Cartman shuffle to her father's beside.

"Fuck, Kenny," Cartman said. "What the hell."

He was complaining, too, and Christine started to feel annoyed, wondering if everyone out there was going to come in and tell Kenny that he had some nerve to die when they still needed him, as if he was cheerfully deserting them. She felt that way herself, and to see his friends saying so was painful.

"Eric," Kenny said. "I'm sorry I always gave you a hard time."

"I gave you a harder time," Cartman said, competitively.

"You guys are gonna have it made in the afterlife," Kenny said when they stood looking at him, holding each other. "You never did meet Lee's in-laws, did you?"

"Emma's parents are dead," Butters said, petting Kenny's shoulder sympathetically.

"I suppose that's true," Kenny said, nodding to himself. "One of them is, anyway. I used to see them around town – I don't think anyone else could, unless they wanted to be seen. I guess they had to go back. Rules and all that. How old is Ian now?"

"Um," Butters glanced at Cartman, tears slipping down his cheeks. "Ian's twelve."

"He wants to be a fucking firefighter," Cartman said, obviously disapproving. He'd tried to pressure Lee into becoming a cop, but it hadn't worked. Lee had more of an accountant's disposition, and that was what he'd become, to some extent, though he was mostly a stay home father to Ian. He also did the books for the occult shop that Emma and Mercury Donovan co-owned. In South Park, it was a surprisingly profitable business.

Christine sat on the windowsill and looked out at the parking lot while Butters made Kenny smile with stories about his grandson. She felt a certain amount of guilt for not having given her father any grandchildren to fuss over. It wasn't impossible at her age, but finding someone whose children she actually wanted to have was starting to feel that way. Phil had been attractive enough, and sex with him was fine, but she'd ultimately come to realize that she just didn't want anything of his growing inside her. Once, drunk, she'd offered her eggs to Jacob, but he didn't want children, probably because he had his hands full with Issac already. Stan and Kyle at least had Simon's kids to spoil with grandfatherly attention. Clint had two daughters with his ex-wife, but they lived with her in L.A. and Kenny rarely saw them.

Butters had a long cry on Kenny's chest, and Kenny made whispered promises about how they would see each other again. Christine had never been entirely sure what the hell her father believed in, religion-wise, but he'd always been confident about the afterlife, and her mother had deferred to him on the subject, as if she, too, was confident that he knew what he was talking about. When Butters finally stepped back, Cartman surprised everyone by leaning down to hug Kenny himself. They didn't speak, and Cartman hurried out of the room afterward, his eyes on the floor.

Craig and Tweek were next, and there was a lot of hysterical sobbing from Tweek, mostly stony silence from Craig.

"I guess I should just f-fucking retire!" Tweek said. "I can't run that place without you!"

"Craig could help," Kenny said. "I was thinking of passing my title down to him. If he wants it."

"Your title?" Craig said. "I didn't think you were actually employed there."

"I'm not," Kenny said. "But I'm the resident creepy old man who hangs around with Tweek at the reference desk. You could handle that, I think."

"You do more than that!" Tweek said. "When we get shipments, he signs for them," Tweek said, turning to Craig. "I hate signing for things, man! It's too much pressure!"

"I could do that," Craig said. "You want me to do that?" he asked Kenny.

"Yes, please," Kenny said. "And keep Tweek company, and make sure we're stocked on coffee – you're pretty much an expert in how much he can burn through, so you're really the only candidate for the job."

"What about the poker games?" Tweek asked, drilling his fists together.

"Craig's good at bossing people around," Kenny said. "He could run them."

"I'm not you, though," Craig said. "People don't like me."

"You don't have to be well-liked to be part of the poker games," Kenny said. "Look at Cartman."

Craig actually smiled then, something Christine had never seen before.

Christine's grandmother spent a long time with Kenny, apologizing a lot, which stressed Christine out almost to the point that she wanted to leave. Aunt Karen was more subdued, being strong for Kenny's sake, petting his hair. It was still blond, remarkably, though duller than it had been. Ike and Bebe were similarly upbeat, as if they believed Kenny's increasingly hard to follow rantings about how they were all going to live in a big house together in the afterlife, even Kevin and his father, if he could find him. The Broflovski siblings gathered around him in a group after their parents had gone, Jacob hanging back with Issac, who was crying silently, wiping at his face.

"Let me see you two," Kenny said when they took their turn at his bedside, Sydney having the good sense to usher Simon and Gwen out the door in case Kenny said something incriminating about the Jacob-Issac situation in his morphine-laced euphoria. "You know who you guys remind me of?" Kenny asked.

"Stan and Kyle," Jacob said, and Issac scoffed wetly.

"No," Kenny said. "You remind me of us," he said, turning to look at Wendy, who was leaning against the wall, keeping a quiet vigil over him while he said goodbye to everyone else. "Me and Wendy. Not in this timeline, in the other one. We kept trying to give up on each other, but then we just couldn't. Destiny," he said vaguely, looking back to Jacob and Issac, who glanced at each other nervously.

"I was going to offer to tweak your morphine drip," Issac said. "But I think they've got it cranked up pretty high already."

"They have," Kenny said, and he grinned. "Suddenly everybody's so eager to give me drugs."

Apparently Kenny had been to rehab, once. Her parents talked about it as if it was inconsequential, and Christine wasn't even sure what he'd been addicted to. She'd only seen him drunk when she was older. At her wedding, he got wasted with Stan and they sang karaoke, but this was after Christine and Phil had departed to their wedding night hotel. She'd seen a video, later.

Stan and Kyle were the last to come in, and it was appropriate, because Kenny was closer to them than he was to his mother and sister, and had been for a long time. Wendy gave them the most distance, moving to the other side of the room to stand with Christine and Clint, wrapping them into her arms. Kyle pulled a chair over to Kenny's bed and leaned down to rest his head on Kenny's limp forearm, his hand circling Kenny's wrist. Stan sat on the bed itself and flattened his hand over Kenny's chest.

"There's so much I wish I could tell you guys," Kenny said. "But I'll save it for when I see you again. Then you'll know everything."

"Don't save it," Kyle said, lifting his head. "Tell us."

"He doesn't have to tell us if he doesn't want to," Stan said.

"He just said he wanted to!"

Kenny laughed. "Naw, it's just. Let's say I had this dream about what the world would be like if you two weren't together, and it was a joke. Everything was backward and mixed up, and Kyle, you – you were an agoraphobic."

"Well," Kyle said. "Let's analyze your dream, shall we? It sounds you think I'd be completely unable to function without Stan."

"You would be," Kenny said, nodding, and they both laughed. "And Stan, um, you were really into musical theater? And you were a virgin, I think. And I was celibate!"

"Kenny," Wendy said, more to herself than to him, and she laughed against Christine's shoulder.

"Well, I was," Kenny said. He was smiling, but for the first time since he'd checked back into the hospital, his eyes were getting wet. "Anyway. At the end of the dream, you found each other and everything got put right. That was the important part. Oh, and Karen was pregnant with the Antichrist, but that's a whole other story."

"Dude, this is not working for me," Stan said, his voice starting to go.

"What's not?" Kenny asked.

"You dying. I'm not – you can't –"

"Stop, stop," Kyle said lightly, and he got out of the chair. He sat on the bed and pulled one of Stan's arms around him, letting Stan collapse onto his back and cry, his other hand still open on Kenny's chest. Kenny twitched, wanting to move, and Christine went to the bed. She took Kenny's hand and put it on top of Stan's, then wiped the corners of his eyes dry. He smiled up at her tearfully. She kissed her fingertips, pressed them to his pineapple-scented lips, and left them alone again. When she resumed her spot between Clint and her mother, Kyle put his hand on top of Kenny's, threading his fingers down through Stan's.

"You guys have to watch out for South Park for me," Kenny said. "Take care of things and so on. I invited Craig to the poker games. You should be nice to him, a little, even if he's an ass. For Tweek's sake. And don't let Cartman boss Lee's kid around too much. He wants to be a firefighter, and I think that's pretty sweet, you know, he'd be good at it, since they can do that whole thing with the fire in their palm and all that. I mean, he's got that in his blood. Goddamn, I'm going to have to hang out with those two for a while, aren't I? At least Christophe will be there. I'm gonna miss you guys, though. Jesus, I'm gonna miss you so much."

"Tell me one thing, okay?" Stan said, lifting his face from Kyle's shoulder.

"Anything," Kenny said, and there was some renewed lucidity in his eyes that made Christine suspect that he knew what Stan would ask.

"That day when you saved Kyle at Stark's Pond—"

"Sweetheart," Kyle said, soft but reproachful, turning his cheek against Stan's.

"No, it's okay," Kenny said. "What do you want to know?"

"I always thought me and Kyle – maybe, we'd sort of gone somewhere – together. Like we were missing some time? I don't know, Kyle hates it when I talk about this."

"I don't hate it," Kyle said, muttering. "It's just. Hard to articulate."

"I never knew you felt that way," Kenny said, and he looked happy to hear it.

"Yeah," Stan said. "But I just wanted to know, because you were there, and you had those blankets, and you knew – something. When we were gone – if we were gone – wherever we went – where were you?"

"I was in South Park," Kenny said, smiling so hard that his lips trembled. "The whole time. Holding down the fort. Waiting for you guys to get back."

"You saved my life," Kyle said, stroking Kenny's hand with this thumb.

"You saved mine," Kenny said.

"I don't know about that."

"No, you did," Kenny insisted. "That day in kindergarten. You guys – you didn't forget me. And you knew me that day at the garage, too. You never really forgot me."

"Of course we didn't," Kyle said, and his facade of acceptance crumbled. He leaned down onto Kenny's chest and cried. Stan rubbed Kyle's back and held Kenny's gaze, shaking his head. Kenny was smiling.

"He called you sweetheart," Kenny said to Stan, and Kyle laughed sadly against Kenny's chest, his face hidden.

"He does that sometimes," Stan said, wiping his face with his sleeve like a kid. "In dire circumstances."

After Stan and Kyle had kissed Kenny's cheeks and told him goodbye, Christine half expected him to immediately slip away, but he seemed somewhat re-energized after they'd left, and they sat talking for a long time, Christine leaning against his right shoulder and Clint against his left, Wendy sitting on the middle of the bed and rubbing Kenny's blanket-covered knees. They talked about nothing in particular, like they were at the breakfast table back when they all lived together, lingering over their plates on a Sunday morning while puddles of syrup solidified. Kenny had a lot of questions about Clint's show, and Clint filled him in on the upcoming plot lines, many of which were absurd. They all ended up laughing and talking about shows they'd all watched together on Friday nights when Clint and Christine were very young, sitcoms and cartoons that Christine hadn't thought about in years. She was surprised that Kenny remembered so many details; he'd often fallen asleep on the couch, and Christine, who missed the mid-afternoon naps she had taken with him before she started going to school, would slump against his side, pull his heavy arm around her like a blanket and listen to his heartbeat. In the light from the television, her mother upstairs tucking Clint into bed, she'd felt so safe and cared for, and still she grew up resenting the attitude that she should want to stay in South Park with the people they'd always known and make a little life like the one her father was close to leaving behind.

Now the universe seemed to be orbiting around Kenny's dwindling life, and as the sun started to go down outside, Christine felt like it was the last time she'd ever see it. She put her ear to Kenny's chest and listened to his weakening heartbeat.

"What were you going to tell me?" Christine asked when her mother was in the bathroom and Clint was distracted, searching through his handheld gallery for some recent picture of his daughters that he wanted Kenny to see.

"Hmm?" Kenny turned to press his forehead to hers. He still smelled like pineapple chapstick. "Oh, uh. I guess I was going to tell you about when Stan and Kyle were apart. That's all so long ago, though." He kissed the bridge of her nose. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Daddy, why are asking me that every five minutes? No, I'm not okay. You're – I mean –"

"I know you're sad about me, but I meant more generally. Like, are you happy and all that?"

Christine exhaled and looked at Clint, but he seemed to know that they needed a moment and was still fussing with his handheld.

"I'm fine, Dad," she said, resting her head on his shoulder. "Don't worry about me."

"I never liked Phil."

"I know you didn't. Well, he's gone now."

"I used to worry that you'd fall in love with Jacob," Kenny said. "Me and Stan had joked about that when your mom was pregnant with you. That our kids would inevitably end up together."

"Who could have predicted what Jacob would actually do," Christine said. "Me and Jacob had a pact that we wouldn't end up back in South Park, and here we both are. It's just that he's here because it makes him happy, and I'm here because my father is dying. But, I. I mean, I'll probably move back to D.C., my firm said I could always have my job back if I wanted it. Daddy, don't worry about me," she said, petting his chest. "I'm okay."

Wendy returned from the bathroom, and Clint brought the pictures over to show everyone. His daughters were cute; Christine hardly knew them. She let her exhaustion pull her under and fell asleep with her head on her father's chest, pretending and then dreaming that they were back on the couch in the living room, having their nap after lunch and before trekking over to the library, which was always empty during the school day. Tweek would sip coffee and listen while Kenny read to her, and she would sit in Kenny's lap feeling like the luckiest kid in South Park, because her father was clearly the _best_. She understood it in the way people looked at him, everywhere they went.

Late that night, Kenny was still alive, dozing between Christine and her mother, who was deeply asleep, clutching at him as if she could keep him in this world with her bare hands. Clint was stretched out on the floor, snoring manfully, his jacket rolled up under his head for a pillow. Christine was still partially asleep when a nurse and a doctor, both young men, entered the room.

"What about her being awake?" the nurse said, sort of cowering behind the doctor, who had dark hair and an unsettling presence, his bulging arms nearly splitting the seams on the lab coat he was wearing.

"She's not really," the doctor said, and he waved his hand. Kenny woke with a start, and Christine tried to sit up, but she was sort of frozen in mid-blink, her eyelashes netted so that she could only see through a kind of grayish haze. It was the sort of sensation that seemed to call for panic, but she felt preternaturally calm, floating, as if she'd been given a morphine drip of her own.

"Guys?" Kenny said. He turned his head, looking down at Wendy and then at Christine. "You've come to get me?" His voice was reedy and weak, his breath starting to wheeze.

"Fuck no," the doctor said.

"We owe you a favor," the nurse said brightly. He was sort of prissy and small, blond. Something about the unnatural grace in the way he moved made Christine think of Emma.

"It's been peaceful without you, McCormick," the doctor said. "We can only come up once a year now, and my daughter told me you're on death's door. I won't have it."

"It would be lovely to have your company again, old chap, no matter what this one says, but really, you saved us so much heartache, and I do feel somewhat responsible for, well. You've gotten stripped of your power, I'm afraid."

"I'm glad to have it gone," Kenny said. "And I, listen – if you had some hand in Wendy remembering, that was payment enough."

"Shut up, ingrate," the doctor said. "I need at least another three hundred years without you stealing my cigarettes."

"That's about thirty years up top, I think," the nurse said. "We can manage just a little more than half that."

"Oh. Well, um. Speaking of cigarettes, where's Christophe?"

"Late, as usual," the doctor said.

"He'll be here, darling," the nurse said.

"So how've you guys been?" Kenny asked, his voice suddenly a bit stronger. "I used to see you around—"

"Yes, we were allowed to be here until Emma was of age," the nurse said. "Now it's just once a year, so sad! She picks the occasion, and she must be rather fond of you, because she knew we would intervene."

"We're sort of related, aren't we?" Kenny said. "Me and her?"

"Don't you dare," the doctor said.

"Oh, I think of all of us as family now, really," the nurse said dreamily.

"Speak for yourself," someone said, entering the room. Even with her vision partially obscured, Christine could see that it was Emma's Frenchman. He was smoking shamelessly, looking ragged and unshaven as usual.

"Christophe!" Kenny said, coughing a little in his excitement. "Where have you been, man?"

"That's an excellent question," the doctor said. "I'm here for only ten more hours, asshole. I'd like to get back to my family, if you don't mind."

"This is your family, too, dear," the nurse said. "But yes, let's do hurry."

"My friend," Christophe said, reaching over Wendy to touch Kenny's jaw. "You're looking like shit."

"Yeah," Kenny said. "But, I mean. I'm a normal mortal now, right? Don't fuck with that. Everybody's got to die sometime. I don't want to screw things up."

"Stop trying to be noble," Christophe said. "You deserve a bonus. You've been uncompensated for your overtime. Sixteen extra dog shit years, and only you have to remember them."

"So that's what we're giving him?" the doctor said. "Sixteen years?"

"How can you guys do this?" Kenny asked. "And you're so sure, I mean – did you end up with some kind of instruction manual?"

"Not exactly," the nurse said. "We just found a loophole."

"You'll still be human," Christophe said. "But you've earned one last reprieve. So just lay back and take it, eh?"

"I'm laying back," Kenny said. "I can't exactly lift my head. Did you do something to them?" he asked, his hand twitching against Christine's leg. "How come they're sleeping through this?"

"I've had enough questioning," the doctor said. He grabbed Christophe's hand and brought it down to Kenny's chest, pressing it there firmly. Kenny sucked in a sharp breath that sent a flare of real panic through Christine's floating calm, but it was quickly eliminated when Kenny sat up, rolling his shoulders out from under the weight of Wendy and Christine.

"Jesus Christ," he said, looking down at his hands and flexing his fingers. His voice was strong again, and he was breathing hard but easily.

"No," the doctor said. "Damien Thorn. You're welcome. Now, if you'll excuse me, my daughter is making me dinner."

"Enjoy your sixteen years!" the nurse said, following the doctor from the room.

"Wait!" Kenny called out. "Ah. God, I mean. Didn't this cost you something?"

"You'd paid in full already," Christophe said. "How do you feel?"

"Fucking amazing," Kenny said. "Except that I think the morphine wore off."

Christine was able to move her eyelids as soon as the nurse and doctor were gone, but once they twitched shut they wouldn't open again. She realized she was still asleep, dreaming, and that Kenny was still lying beside her. Something was different, though. His heartbeat was strong against her cheek, and he'd wrapped an arm around her back.

When she woke up, her mother was crying, and she lifted up onto her elbow, her lip already shaking as she prepared to have her first look at her father's lifeless features. But he wasn't lifeless: he was smiling up at Wendy, flushed and alert as he wiped away her tears.

"Hey, baby," he said to Christine, and he sat up beside her, rolling his shoulder. "Wake your brother up, okay?"

"Daddy?" she said, sobbing.

"I know, shh." He kissed her forehead. "It's just. I don't know what to tell you. I feel good – I'm gonna be okay. Go wake Clint."

Christine felt like she had on Christmas as a kid, when she had jumped on her brother's bed at four in the morning to wake him so they could survey their presents. She was sort of stumbling, confused, and she knew when Clint sat up with a jerk that he thought she was waking him to tell him that their father had died. She moved aside so that he would see this wasn't the case. Kenny was sitting up in bed, smiling at them, Wendy hugged against his chest. Clint looked at Christine, his lips working around the syllables of a question that he couldn't quite form.

"I knew you wouldn't leave me," Wendy said, and she lifted her wet face to press her cheek to Kenny's. "I knew this time."

Real nurses and doctors came, and Christine didn't have a chance to ask Kenny about the ones in her dream. It was a miraculous recovery, and out came one IV and then the other, the catheter and the oxygen tube. Her father looked ten years younger, sitting up in bed and answering the doctor's bewildered questions. Maybe sixteen years younger.

Christine was sent out to the waiting room to tell anyone who was still lingering the good news. They were all still there, even Eric Cartman, and more had come. Her uncle Kevin's children had shown, and Henrietta was sitting with Clyde, holding his hand. She was the one who rose and came toward Christine as she stood there feeling everyone's eyes on her, not knowing how to tell them what she couldn't yet believe.

"Christie," Henrietta said, taking her shoulders. Christine had spent so much time over at Zelda's house as a kid that Henrietta and Clyde were like a second set of parents. There had been a time when the McCormicks and the Donovans vacationed together.

"He's okay," Christine said.

"What do you mean?" Kyle asked, standing. "We saw doctors coming and going—"

"Come and see," Christine said, meeting Jacob's eyes over Henrietta's shoulder. Jacob was half out of his chair, as if he wasn't yet sure if he should leap into action, his hand braced on Issac's knee. Christine was still wearing his jacket. "You just have to come and see," she said to Kyle, who had walked to her, his arms crossed over his chest as if he was cold, Stan trailing behind him. "All of you. Everybody. You won't believe it unless you come see."

They were surely breaking a number of hospital rules, but the doctors seemed too flustered by Kenny's recovery to notice that twenty people had crowded into his room, and the room was cluttered with everybody's questions, cut through with sobbing and nervous laughter. Everyone seemed to need to put their hands on Kenny to see if he was really still there – even Eric Cartman ruffled his hair, fondly calling him a son of a bitch. Grandma Carol was praising Jesus, and Christine was still reeling, meeting her father's eyes through the throng of people. At one point he winked at her like he knew that she was in on whatever fantastic trick he'd played on Death. Overwhelmed to point of feeling faint, she smiled back at him, too happy to see him wireless and moving with ease to yet question whatever miracle had occurred. She pulled Jacob's sweatshirt off and handed it to him.

"It's so weird," Jacob said, taking it from her. His eyes were wet, and Issac was dry-eyed now, silenced by confusion. "I feel like I knew this would happen. But I didn't, I mean. It's just so – it's so—"

"South Park," Issac said, and Christine laughed, because Kenny would say that himself if he was asked to fit words to this phenomenon.

"I have to get some air," she said. Outside, the sun had come up, and in fact it was nearly eleven o'clock in the morning. She walked through the halls of the hospital deliriously, wondering when she would feel like she had woken from that dream.

It hit her once she was outdoors, walking aimlessly from the front doors of the hospital, the cold mountain air stinging her ears. She sat down on a short stone wall that bordered some frigid pansies. It was late May and there was no snow on the ground, but she could smell it in the air, either forthcoming or melting up in the mountains. She was stoic for a few moments, trying to process a single thought to completion, and when she finally started sobbing it was mostly with relief, but there was misery in it, too, because she would lose him someday, and the past few months of being back in South Park and helping her mother care for him had brought the emptiness of her life without him into undeniable focus.

"Oh, God," someone said, appearing suddenly in front of her. "Am I too late?"

Christine looked up to see a man in a police uniform who was bearing flowers. Peonies, mostly, mixed in with roses, bright pink and white. She cleared the blur of her tears away enough to realize that the man was Cloud Donovan. He sat down beside her and hugged her shoulders.

"I'm so sorry, Christie," Cloud said, whispering this in a way that made her think of him at ten years old, trailing her and Zelda around the house and asking if he could come with them to the mall.

"Oh – don't be sorry," she said, putting her hand on Cloud's thigh in a way that was probably overly familiar; she hadn't seen him in years. "My dad's going to be okay, actually. It's sort of – well, it's a miracle, I guess."

"Jesus, really?" Cloud grinned as if he would happily accept this, no questions asked. He looked down at the flowers. "That's so awesome, Christie. I tried to get off shift earlier, but I couldn't, and I thought. Well, anyway, I brought these." He offered her the bouquet.

"Thanks," she said, taking them. "They're really nice." She felt stupid, crying over someone who hadn't died, crying for herself, really, but she was glad not to be alone. Cloud was seven years younger than her, and she still thought of him as a little boy in her memories. It was strange to be confronted with the reality of him now: he looked a lot like his father, with Henrietta's round cheeks. At school, everyone had called him Donny because of his unfortunate first name, but Christine had always thought of him as Cloud. He'd seemed more like a Cloud than a Donny, and he still did, even with a gun on his hip.

"Are my parents still in there?" he asked.

"Yeah, they are. You can go, I mean – I'm fine."

"That's okay," he said. "I'll sit out here for a minute. It's pretty nice out."

"Uh-huh." She was somewhat startled to realize this was true: the sky was clear and there were wildflowers blooming in the little islands of grass that were spread throughout the hospital's front parking lot. "Still pretty cold, though," she said, beginning to worry about how she must look.

"Oh, here." He took off his jacket, a heavy standard-issue thing with SPPD stitched across the front pockets, and before she could protest he was draping it around her. His uniform shirt had short sleeves, but he was one of those South Park boys who had gone around in t-shirts in December like it was some kind of contest he was having with the weather, and he seemed fine.

"Thanks," Christine said, aware that Jacob would laugh riotously if he knew what was going through her mind at the moment. The jacket was warm and smelled like powdered hot chocolate mix. "Um, how's your sister?" Christine asked, bringing the flowers up to her face so she could smell them, too.

"Zelda's okay," Cloud said. "We don't talk that much."

"She's still in Toronto, your dad said?"

"Uh-huh. She's a freakin' Canadian citizen now." He grinned and she laughed. Christine had had a falling out with Zelda in college that had mostly stemmed from Clint's lack of romantic interest in her, which was hardly Christine's fault. They'd sort of mended things years later, but Christine loathed Zelda's husband, a Canadian named Mike who had very uppity facial hair and had once played the keyboard in a band called Congress. Now they both worked at the University of Toronto in some capacity; human resources or something like that. They had four kids Christine had never met.

"I saw Mercury the other day," Christine said. "That little shop she's got with Emma now – that's really something."

"Really something," Cloud said in agreement, and he smirked. "You're not into all that stuff, are you?"

"All what stuff?"

"Uh, you know. Magic candles."

"Oh, I don't know." Christine let her shoulders slump inside his massive jacket. She couldn't stop thinking that she probably looked like hell, and she'd detected the scent of something else on his jacket, beyond the powdered hot chocolate, something that was more just the smell of him, his sweat maybe.

"My mom was always into it," Cloud said. "Obviously. I got an open mind and all that, but I don't know if I believe people can do spells or whatever."

"Maybe not," Christine said. She tried to get a clear mental image of the nurse and doctor who'd been in her dream – that Frenchman had definitely been there, Emma's friend. Christine had become friendly with Emma Cartman herself since she'd come back to town. She was younger, closer to Cloud's age, and a perfect example of the kind of South Park woman Christine had once been bound and determined never to become: pregnant by her high school boyfriend before her graduation cap could hit the lawn, happily married to him and spending her days gossiping with Mercury as they watched the townsfolk pass by the front windows of their odd little shop. Lee brought her lunch every day and fawned over her the way Butters had always done with Cartman. Their son was cute – probably a future member of the South Park Fire Department. It was the way this town functioned. People decided who they would be pretty early on. Christine had once thought she was being different by deciding that she would do no such thing herself.

"Are you happy here in South Park?" Christine asked Cloud.

"Sure," he said. He seemed unsurprised by the question, surveying the parking lot.

"You and Natasha never got married?"

"Oh – no. We were engaged for a while, but she ended up moving to Denver with this guy who has, you know. Money. Zelda said you split up from that lawyer guy?"

"We – yeah. Three years ago."

"You're still a lawyer, though?" he asked, turning to her with such a look of sincere concern that she burst into laughter.

"Yeah," she said. "I didn't divorce the profession. Just the guy."

She was afraid that had come out meanly, but he grinned. Cloud had always seemed fairly immune to judgmental remarks, or at least not concerned by them. She supposed any boy with his name would have to get that way quick.

"Should we go in?" she asked when they'd been smiling at each other an overlong amount of time.

"Sure," he said. "If you want." He stood and offered his arm. She took it.

Inside, the staff had managed to clear only some of Kenny's friends and family out into the waiting area. Everyone embraced Christine like they hadn't seen her in years, and she hugged them back just as hard, still wearing Cloud's jacket. People were hugging him, too, and he was taking it in stride. When Christine made it through the outer layers of celebratory loved ones, she wasn't surprised to find Kyle and Stan still in Kenny's room. Kenny was sitting with his legs hanging over the side of the bed, resting back against Wendy, who was hugged around him from behind. He'd gotten dressed in normal clothes – Jacob's fleece sweatshirt and somebody's jeans that were too short for him, his bare ankles exposed over a pair of argyle socks that were probably Kyle's. Christine had no idea why anyone would keep an extra pair of socks on hand, and she didn't care much at the moment. She went to her father and fell into his arms, hugging him like she had after her first day of school, so relieved that she could return to the world where he was always reaching down to pick her up.

"I had the strangest dream last night," she said when she pulled back.

"I know," Kenny said. He held her hands, and she had to blink back tears, because yesterday he hadn't been able to hold anything. "We should make that the town motto," Kenny said, looking at Stan. "South Park, Colorado: 'We're that Strange Dream You Had Last Night.'"

"That'd be good for tourism," Stan said, beaming. He was still crying a little, and so was Kyle, wiping his face on Stan's shirt.

"What's that you're wearing?" Wendy asked, reaching around Kenny's shoulder to fold down the pocket on Cloud's jacket.

"Donny's let me borrow it," Christine said. "He brought you flowers, Dad – oh, I must have given them back to him."

"Aw, little Cloud," Kenny said.

"He's not so little anymore," Christine said, holding up the sleeve of the jacket to demonstrate. It was hanging over her hand by about five inches.

"That kid," Kyle said, sniffling. "He pulled me over last week for doing sixty-something in a forty-five. If Clyde thinks I'm going to pay that ticket he's insane."

"I'm sure the Chief of Police will drop everything to fix your speeding ticket, dear," Stan said. Kyle gave him an irritable look, and Stan kissed his forehead. "Actually, he probably will," Stan said. "Knowing Clyde."

"Well, precisely," Kyle said, looking pleased.

Kenny had to stay overnight for observation, but he was agreeable to this, in a great mood and talking about the returning-to-life party he was going to throw for himself, sparing no expense. Christine got a ride home with Karen, dying for a shower and planning to return to the hospital later with dinner for her parents. She didn't realize that she was still wearing Cloud's jacket until she was undressing in her childhood bedroom. She tied on a robe and found her handheld on top of the dresser. It was covered with a layer of dust, untouched for at least three days. She didn't have Cloud in her index, but she found him through Zelda's and sent him a message.

_Sorry_ _for_ _stealing_ _your_ _jacket_

She took a long shower, cried more, and tried to make sense of what had happened last night. But it was just a dream, of course. She'd seen that doctor and nurse somewhere around town, once – she was sure of it now. Her subconscious mind simply plugged them in as – angels? That didn't seem right; the dark-haired one had seemed downright sinister. Still, she'd gotten the impression that he'd cared for her father in some fashion. She shut off the water and rubbed her eyes clear. Now that her father was well, if she wanted to, she could return to D.C. and let all of South Park feel like a dream that could never be properly untangled.

Out in her childhood bedroom, now her mother's yoga studio but still painted a very pale pink, she wrapped a towel around her wet hair and checked her handheld. There was a new message, a response from Cloud:

_well I ended up with your flowers so we're even. I'm off shift if you want me to come over so we can trade_

She was chewing her lip while she typed her response, grinning. She told him to come, put on a sweater dress and boots, and only had time to do her makeup, her hair still damp and spilling around her shoulders in wet tangles by the time he rang the doorbell. She jogged downstairs, feeling sixteen years younger herself, and grinned when she found him on the front porch, holding those flowers.

"Oh, fuck!" she said, bringing her palm to her forehead. "I left your jacket upstairs." It wasn't some kind of plot; she really had forgotten, caught up in an effort to make herself look pretty.

"That's alright," he said. "I'm not in a hurry or anything." He held the flowers out and she took them.

She invited Cloud inside, again imagining Jacob's response to this, how he would laugh and laugh at the irony. Or maybe he wouldn't laugh. She hadn't laughed at him and Issac when they'd seemed to be happy together at last, settled into real adult lives and still tripping over each other with adoration.

But really, nothing was happening: she was making coffee for Cloud, and he was filling the vase she'd found for the flowers with water. Her father was alive, and the sun had come up over South Park. It all seemed inevitable now, when last night nothing had. She was embarrassed for wanting Cloud to grab her and dance her around the kitchen while she laughed with relief. She realized that she was happy, and caught herself making plans to stay.

"What?" Cloud said, because she was smiling to herself while she poured his coffee.

"Nothing," she said. "I was just thinking about something I said to Jacob when we were kids. About how I wondered if all our parents would have ended up together if they hadn't started out in South Park."

"Oh, yeah," Cloud said. "Have you ever seen pictures of my parents from back in high school? It's freaking hilarious. My mom was like, in full-on witch makeup, and my dad looked like this dumb jock. Tasha used to get all worked up about it, like, she didn't want to turn into her parents and be stuck here forever."

"Ha," Christine said, mixing sugar into her coffee. "You never felt that way?"

"Well, sort of, but, man, look at me." He grinned. "I'm wearing the uniform, right? Now all I gotta do is marry one of Merc's little spell casting buddies and I'll be just like my dad."

Christine laughed and hid her face in her coffee cup, feeling ridiculous.

"I can't stand her friends, though," Cloud said, leaning across the table. "So that's, you know. Not gonna happen."

"Well," Christine said. "I should get your jacket."

"Are you gonna be in town for a while?" Cloud asked. She met his eyes across the table and realized she didn't know how to answer that. "I mean, I hope so," he said, turning red. She thought of going to the beach with the Donovans when she was a senior in high school and Cloud was barely in junior high, some afternoon when he'd stood beside her in the kitchen of their rental house, watching patiently while she made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for both of them.

"I think I'll be here for a while," she said, and he blushed more deeply, smiling.


End file.
